lrmann@uci.edu,gryphon@world.std.com UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES -- FUTURE IMPERFECT P R O V I N G G R O U N D S Copyright (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Uninc. FOREWORD BY AUTHORS --- Ben "Gryphon" Hutchins (gryphon@world.std.com):: What you are about to read is the first of a Undocumented Features story arc called Proving Grounds. It's a section of the Future Imperfect part of UF, which takes place after _Undocumented Features Volume 4: Crossroads_. It appears that there will be several arcs within the Future Imperfect cycle; the basic idea behind Proving Grounds is its focus on, primarily, a small group of characters and the changes that the times cause in them. If you stay with it for the full run, you'll see some pretty dramatic changes; you'll see children be born and grow up; you may even learn something from the people you're watching. Or perhaps, in my eagerness, I overestimate myself, my co-authors, my characters; time will tell. If there is any lesson to be learned in Proving Grounds, it's that time will tell. There are problems with this first installment, from a purist standpoint; I'll grant that. It's very long, much longer than Larry and I originally intended it to become, and yet when we sought to break it up into three or so separate stories, they never sat well with us. The central idea is incomplete without all the story presented. It rambles, and might even seem incoherent at times; but then, so do our lives. Bear with these foibles and you may find the stories themselves rewarding. You may even come to like the somewhat unusual styling. As always, we welcome comments and other feedback, so long as those who criticize don't mind seeing us defend our position. :) --G. 15 December 1994 --- Larry "R-Type" Mann (lrmann@uci.edu):: Welcome to Future Imperfect, and to _Proving Grounds_. I think Gryph pretty much covered it: this is the beginning of one of the most challenging pieces of fanfic which has ever been written. For us, anyway. This thing is big. Really big. Not much for it, though, simply because there's quite a bit to be talked about here. Get ready for a lot of changes. Times are changing, people are changing, growing up. Old problems have been replaced with new ones, and the rules are beginning to change accordingly. My personal opinion: I've learned quite a bit in the course of putting this project together, and I'd like to think that as this story continues to unfold, there will be a lot of wisdom to be found here, wisdom that perhaps we could all apply to real life, and just maybe make this life a little more tolerable. But of course, it's up to you, our readers, to make the final decision for yourselves. That's the way democracy works, after all. :) I promised myself I wasn't going to get long-winded, as I tend to do , so let me finish by saying again that comments and other feedback are welcomed. Just remember to email both of us, okay? :) I stand by my coauthors, and our characters, and I believe we can learn quite a bit from their experience. So, with that said, let's begin. Please enjoy the ride! -RT 17 December 1994 -- /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | "schhKK chKK....... sccchhhhhhhKRRRRRRRRRRKK... *BEEP*" | | -- an Apple 5.25" Disk Drive reporting an I/O error | +----------------------------v------------------v---------------------------+ | R-Type, a.k.a. Larry Mann | | Deus Ex Machina for hire | \----------------------------^------------------^---------------------------/ 23 APRIL 2389 PLANET EARTH CITY OF IRVINE The eastern sky began to change from black to a shade of dark blue, allowing the hills along that horizon to become visible, if only as black silhouettes. It wouldn't be long before the color would lighten further and then change gently into a shade of magenta and orange, ultimately brightening into blue skies as the Pacific sector of the United States moved further and further into Sol's field of vision. But none of those things had happened yet, and the landscape was still dark except for the streetlights, signs both neon and fluorescent, and the rhythmic color changes of traffic lights being controlled by anti-burnout timers. There was no sound except for the inescapable noise of the occasional vehicle which shot down the otherwise deserted I-405 Freeway, often serving as the only indication of life anywhere in the immediate area. Early morning hours were, and always had been, the time of near-total inactivity for the city of Irvine. A pair of headlights differentiated themselves from the near darkness and silence of the city, as a vehicle cruised down Jamboree Road (one of the major thoroughfares of the city), well below the posted maximum speed limits. Each time the vehicle passed under a streetlamp, the resultant light reflected off the aircar's light-colored body and cast a shadow on the ground 20 feet below. The car moved leisurely yet deliberately, as if it knew exactly where it was going but was in no real hurry to get there. An observer might indeed ask where it was going, with the city as dead as it was now. What sort of business was conducted at this hour? The car continued on its slow, quiet path, until it began to near a large, pyramid-shaped building, one of the largest structures in the city. It bore a strong resemblance to the twin GENOM towers in Los Angeles, although this building was shorter and had a considerably narrower base, and was surrounded by several smaller structures in a ring-shaped arrangement. The pyramid itself was completely dark except for the red glow of the aircraft warning beacons at its apex. Some of the surrounding structures were just as dark, while others glowed with orange or white energy from arc lamps which remained on throughout the night. Only one of the darkened sub-buildings chose to betray the identity of this structure to the universe, with a series of large red block letters which spelled "GENOM". That sign, too, remained on all night. Reflections of the car's headlights began to appear in the road as it descended to ground level and turned into the complex's main entryway. It came to a stop at an outer guardpost, sat there for a moment as the vehicle's operator had some brief discussion with the guards there, and then proceeded forward. The car moved into the right lane of the entryway, and then turned onto an access ramp which led to a tunnel, which in turn led underground, illuminated on either side by powerful orange arc lights. The car cruised into the tunnel and disappeared from view, and then all was silent again, the noise of sparse and distant traffic once again the only sound to split the slowly fading nighttime. Approximately seven minutes later, the tower's solid sheen of blackness was broken by the illumination of a single office on the northern side of the building, situated on one of the uppermost floors. Once again, had there been anyone present to notice, they might have wondered why activity like this would be happening so early in the day, wondered what sort of purpose it might serve. In fact the man who now sat by the office window, looking silently out toward the eastern horizon as it began to bear the faintest hints of magenta and orange in its sky, was not entirely certain what it was that had brought him here as early as it was, either. He'd had trouble sleeping the night before -- just a case of 24-hour insomnia, as far as he could tell, but it had reached the point where it wasn't just inability to sleep, but a desire to move around, to get out and do something. So, for lack of any other place to head to at this ungodly hour, he'd gone to the office. Sometimes, going to the office when it was completely deserted like this actually had a relaxing effect and helped him sort things out. This time it didn't help much; his mind was just as jumpy and indecisive as before. Definitely a case of undefined angst, then. The problem of undefined angst had been with him for as long as he could remember, what with his mind always considering all possibilities and creating worst-case scenarios for everything. Now that he was here he didn't want to go out again, so he just kept looking out the window at the sunrise. Anything could happen. What bothered him the most was that all his usual attempts at solving the angst problem had not succeeded. What exactly *was* the problem? What was it he wanted/needed? Did he know? No, not really. That had become a trend of late, what with all the recent massive changes in the world around him, particularly the makeup of his company. All of a sudden there were all these new options and possibilities for the future, and quite frankly it was a little bit more than his mind was up to dealing with. It was hard to say just how much had really changed, actually. The major changes, of course, were that 1) a new Master had taken command, and 2) the company's military division had been ripped apart, and the Wedge Defense Force had taken possession of most of it. (It was supposed to be a good thing, he knew, that latter event. So why did he have mixed emotions about it?) Other than that, GENOM was pretty much the same as it had always been, its basic structure completely unaffected. Some of their holdings had been sold off, and a buyout or three had been cancelled, but GENOM was still essentially the most powerful corporation in known space. The cat's claws had been trimmed, but it wasn't like the WDF had gutted it. A lot of previously secret GENOM papers had gone into the public domain, true, but that would not affect him personally in any way; an equal number of documents had remained secret and classified, and that included the impressive array of data contained in the Black Folders. Actually most of the major Black data had been appropriated by the WDF, but some of the files were still there; he knew because his access codes and clearance still worked, much to his surprise. Black Files... sheesh. His thoughts wandered back to a bookcase sitting in his bedroom, one which contained paper and disc copies of various projects he'd been involved in. A share of those had been located in the Black Files at one time or another. Granted his personal involvement in those operations was not horribly significant, or had been downplayed if it was (GENOM's majordomo ACI, Battia, had been most helpful in this endeavor), but he couldn't erase the things he'd done from his mind. Those reports in his bedroom served as a constant reminder and testimonial to what the company had done to him. In his time he had, to stay afloat, learned just about everything there was to know about all the wrong ways to conduct business. Extortion, forgery, bribery, blackmail... shit, even murder and other things which were more horrendous than he could deal with rationally. Name it, he probably learned how to do it. He'd taught himself how to be evil. There was another side to the whole thing, though. He tended to remember the bad moments more than the good; typical of any human being, really. But for every bad point, there was at least one good one too. GENOM was a lot more than simply an armada of warships and Buma, after all. It was a large-scale industrial manufacturing company, with the same goals and competitive interests as any other corporation on the galactic scene. And had the company's former ruler been less obsessed with certain things, GENOM might have become a very different corporation. His gaze moved away from the sunrise, taking his thoughts along, and passed across the walls and file cabinets. At least two dozen plaques and diplomas adorned the walls, and other service medals and decorations were scattered throughout. GENOM had funded his education through the years (his Doctoral degrees had all been financed through company funds), paid his medical bills and insurance, and had spared no expense on his behalf for his research projects. The awards were for good or outstanding conduct in the various jobs he'd held over the years. It was through this company that he'd learned everything there was to know about the art of doing business. Legitimate business. Through training and GENOM's own workshops and seminars, and a lot of experience both white and black, he'd become one of the best CEOs, one of the best researchers, and one of the best techs, the corporation had to offer. And all that hard work had earned him his seniority, benefits, and a lot of clout and recognition in the corporate world, not to mention one hell of a salary. GENOM had been good to him too. And that's what made the decision-making process so difficult for him now. Did he really want to resign? He could do it. He had enough money to last him for years. But would he lose reliable access to his means of life-extension? And where would he go? The WDF? They did, after all, have the alluring and much more reliable method of life-extension known as Omega-2. But what would he have to do to earn *that*? It was the equivalent of a Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded for exceptional valor or major scientific breakthrough. He wasn't a combatant, and he'd already made most of his greatest discoveries. Shit, it might be unreachable. For that matter... could he even be certain that the WDF would even give him the time of day? Quite frankly, the WDF had every reason to hate his guts, and he wouldn't blame them for it. Some of their conflicts had been at a distance, and others up close and personal. One particular one surfaced in his mind, the one his computer programmer's side would never forget. Hell, no part of him would ever forget what had happened that day. It was a battle which might -- or might not, he really wasn't sure -- have been his closest call ever. The year was 2270. The place was Turing III... 2270 APRIL 20 @ 0131 HOURS SOMEWHERE IN THE NIVEN SECTOR In a quiet office building, R-Type sat down at a desk and unpacked his deck, connecting the power cables to the subspace/subether transmission trunk. The 'frame would think his deck was just another terminal, which was good: he wanted as few ID traces as possible. He worked silently, and on the surface appearing totally emotionless, not even talking to himself as he usually did when decking. This was happening whether he liked it or not, and he didn't like it. It wasn't so much about what was going to happen, as *when* it was happening. That was the wrong and idiotic part. R- Type felt he could honestly say he was the only one who really understood that. And with GENOM, majority rules, especially when Largo is the majority. (Of course Largo would still rule even if he were the minority. Go figure.) He plugged in the programs he needed: LogicProbe and Railgun codebreakers, a daemon containing a couple low-level attack utils, and another daemon which had what was (he hoped) enough defensive equipment in case things went bad, which was, sorry to say, quite likely. He checked his watch. 01:32:00. Rendezvous was in 60 seconds. He shook his head. This was insane, he knew, but try telling Largo that. Largo says "do", you "do", no matter how FUBAR you think the plan to be. R-Type thought this plan was FUBAR in a big way, and he'd tried to explain why to Largo and that idiot Charles LaPlante. Neither had listened to him. He'd considered asking that somebody else take charge of the attack, but Largo wanted *him* there, and crossing Largo was a Bad Thing(tm). Not only that, LaPlante was an ACI expert, and R-Type needed LaPlante's knowledge to proceed with his own ACI experiments. All pros and cons considered, R-Type decided to go through with it. But if he was going to drop into a situation where everything was against him, by damn he was going to be *ready*. He'd signed on earlier, using his normal identity, and briefed his troops on the meeting time and attack plan. At 01:33:30 they would telnet to icc.turing.net, and there rendezvous with their commanding officer, ThunderKnight, known in the real world as Rai Oyasumi. Oyasumi was, R-Type had said, a freelance decker whom R- Type trusted implicitly. The more sentient Cyber-Wraiths were a bit skeptical, but LaPlante had said he could vouch for the T'Knight. (He knew who "Rai" really was.) If all went according to plan, 60 real-seconds later that node would become GENOM's property. Of course R-Type did *not* expect anything to go "according to plan". 01:32:30. Time to hook up. He plugged his cybercables in and issued a dial command... CARRIER SUBSPACE (57600) PROTOCOL: MNP-ETH, v.102BIS CONNECT SUBETHER You are connected to GNM-ts9, a GENNet terminal server. GNM-ts9> 229.100.44.1 Trying 229.100.44.1... Open. GENOM C-OS UNIX: RIGEL.ICS.NIVEN.COM (GENOM C-OS 4.5, update 226801.14) login: royasumi Password: Last login Tue 226912.25@00:04:19 on ttyaQ from GNM-ts9. TERM = (vt100) cspace Loading requested interface... Done. Ready for Cyberspace injection. Connect all cables and press GO when ready... OK. Injecting... The momentary disorientation of the initial noisestorm passed, and R-Type was in cyberspace, standing before icc.turing.net, the datafortress which was the Internet Control Center, the main hub and primary controller for the galaxy-spanning Internet. He brought a Cloak util online, and the virtual representation of the ThunderKnight -- a tall Human man in techno-samurai armor with a black cloverleaf emblem emblazoned onto the breastplate -- disappeared. Now he could observe the still-secure node without drawing undue attention to himself. R-Type had seen this datafortress a couple times before, and each time he was amazed by how mind-bogglingly big it was. The fortress loomed quite impressively on its virtual ramparts, a big white-stone Welsh castle, circa the High Middle Ages. In fact it looked a lot like the castle from David Macauley's "Castle". Very nice. Also very imposing. Its drawbridge, the main access gate, was closed, as he'd expected. R-Type sat on the virtual ground and sighed inwardly. He was still firmly convinced that this was one of the most idiotic things GENOM had ever done. Attacking an Internet node at 1:34 AM, a node which was controlled by people who were, like him, primarily gweeply? How stupid can you get? There was a reason 2200 to 0200 was called the "gweepning". GENOM was doing something which was a lot like walking into a lion's den when the lion was 1) in a really bad mood, and 2) very hungry. He shook himself and forced himself to ramp down the negative vibes. He was the CO of a legion of GENOM Cyber-Wraiths. It wouldn't do to give off a losing attitude. This was one of those funny little paradoxes/ironies that life seemed to get a real kick out of throwing at him. He had to at least *look* like he had a winning attitude. So of course he was going to have to try to win. Of course trying to win would be a serious health hazard. These people would defend this node with all the black software they could dig up. And R-Type's own forces would be throwing equally deadly utilities around. He didn't feel like dying, but it was death either way. Weighing the options, he found that going back and telling Largo that he was an idiot meant inescapable death. (He'd had one conversation with Teleute already, and though she was the most wonderful person he'd ever met, one conversation was enough.) Here in the Net, on the other hand, he at least had a fighting chance. So, the Net it was. [I hate my life,] he grumbled inwardly. He called up a clock icon, which informed him that it was 01:33:27 in realtime. He shut down the Cloak util, becoming visible again. Any moment now... Behind him, three separate telnet gates opened and enlarged to accommodate the massive traffic flow coming through them. His forces had arrived: the legion of Cyber-Wraiths, which were a collection of real-live deckers, Buma, and Cybernetic Intelligences (not ACIs, mind you; they weren't good/smart enough). Also present were the icons of a few LAPCIS ACIs, responding to the call of their designer, LaPlante, for assistance. And R-Type recognized the icon of one of his own creations, a STACIS ACI named Battia, a humaniform with long jet-black hair and cat ears. The majordomo of GENOM itself; well, that did offer a boost of confidence. Battia approached him as the Wraiths continued to pour out of the gates. Those who were already out waited patiently for the next command. "Good evening, ThunderKnight," she said. "I've been informed that you are our commanding officer for this operation." (She didn't recognize him, which was what R-Type had intended. Good.) "I am," R-Type replied. "Lady Battia, isn't it? I was informed that you would be my lieutenant." "Just 'Battia' will be fine. May I call you TK?" she asked, and he nodded approval. She glanced up at the datafortress. "So what's our next course of action?" "Well, if all goes as planned," R-Type replied. "In about 5 real-seconds that drawbridge will drop, and our forces will just move right in; ICC will be ours." "What about internal security?" "There shouldn't be any, if all goes well. Order all forces into ready mode." Battia nodded, forking a command process off to the legion, which responded by moving into a crescent shape in front of the data fortress. From his position near the center of the throng, amid the cacophony of various attack and defense programs being loaded into position, R-Type checked his clock icon. 2 real-seconds remaining... 1 real-second... 01:34... The drawbridge did not open. R-Type glanced at his clock icon again; it was reading correctly. he thought. He allowed a few more real-seconds. Still nothing. "Check me if I'm wrong, TK," Battia said. "But isn't that thing supposed to be open now?" "Yes, it is," R-Type said, anger beginning to rise in his voice. He'd *known* this thing was going to be FUBAR from the very start. 0134 was *NOT* the time to try and take down an Internet node populated by gweeps, especially *this* one. Why was it that *he* was the only one who seemed to understand that?? [Stay cool, stay cool,] he reminded himself. Time to plan some emergency strategy. [Think. LaPlante may just be behind schedule. On the other hand he may have been found out... Can't back down now, he may need help. On the other hand an attack might sound every alarm in the sector. Shit. Okay... activity seems pretty low in there, which would suggest LaPlante *did* knock down most of the internal security himself. And if that's true, then there won't be much in the line of an alarm system. Knowing that...] "LogicProbe!" he commanded. A large boxy device with two light-emitting projections at the front materialized. "Main gate! Full power!" he shouted. It surged forward and plowed into the closed drawbridge, emitting a shower of electrical pulses and sending energy waves rippling across the gate. R-Type could make out several icons appearing on the battlements of the castle, and suddenly arrows began to fly in their direction. Some of the defenses were still operational. "Attack!!" R-Type commanded. "I want those defenses taken out ASAP!" The Cyber-Wraiths acknowledged his command by surging forward and firing their own attack utilities at the castle. Battia drew her sword and charged forward with them, deflecting the missiles shot at her with ease. R-Type remained where he was; he had no desire to place himself in the path of any kind of fire if he could help it, and besides, coordinating the fighting was much easier from this vantage point. R-Type had never actually witnessed defenders taking to the battlements of a castle and raining arrows down on attackers before. It was, virtually at least, quite impressive. For his forces, though, it was a Bad Thing(tm). That castle was everything that a castle of the Middle Ages was meant to be, equipped with sturdy battlements and dozens of murder holes and arrow loops through which attacks could be sent with minimal danger. Getting in was no picnic. The arrows, like the castle, were also deceptive and dangerous. Simple and primitive-looking, they punched through the armor programs of the rank-and-file Wraiths with ease, hosing them quite effectively. This node had been designed extremely well, designed to keep groups like GENOM from getting in. "So much for 'I'll handle the guards'," R-Type grumbled, dragging a hand across his face. The logic probe, unconcerned, continued hammering away at the main gate, and reported that it was making progress. Evidently LaPlante and the Sysops who'd sided with him had at least done part of their job, taking down most of the site's inner defenses. R-Type scanned the battlements from his position of relative safety, for anyone who might be a ranking officer or even a Sysop. He knew there had to be at least one on duty, maybe more, especially at this hour. he thought, trying to will the logic probe to do its work faster. Every nanosecond counted now... It was then that he noticed the One Thing That, Even in a Worst Case Scenario, was Never Going to Happen(tm): The transmission tower was active. Someone was sending out a message, and it was obviously not to him or any of his forces. That fact had several implications and possibilities attached to it, none of which were very pleasant from R-Type's point of view. "Railgun!" His right arm 'morphed into a hardsuit railgun and he aimed for the tower, hoping to kill -9 the process and stop the message before it got sent. By the time he was ready to issue the firing command, however, transmission had stopped. Either the sender had completed his/her request or it had been cut short. Either way, somebody was going to notice. This was not good at all. He sent a message of his own, a call for additional forces. Reason: code black (read: Completely Fucked Up, But You Said No Retreating, Sir). From within the battlements of the castle, he heard a man's voice bellowing to some hapless subordinate: "WHERE IN THE FLYING HOLY HELLS IS SQIRL, DAMN IT ALL?!" Well, that was one good thing, he hoped. With their strongest Sysop missing it would give R-Type's forces a slight edge. They just might pull this off after all. The logic probe kept bashing away. The gate was obviously weakening. It was also obvious that they were attempting to shore it up from behind. The two interaction curves *were* beginning to spiral down slowly. The probe *was* winning; he'd designed his codecracker well. But with the ongoing attempt to reconstruct the gate from inside, there would be delays. And now, any delay could have horrible consequences. "Go to 110%! Emergency power!" R-Type ordered the probe. And it did just that, but it was already strained to near maximum and so offered very little gain. The probe reported in as having the gate 95% decoded... 96%... 97%... 98%... Suddenly there was a whistling noise, and R-Type discovered that he was standing in the corner of a very large shadow. Ohhh SHIT! Dodge left! NOW!! An object he recognized as the virtual representation of an anvil crashed into, and crashed, the logic probe, vaporizing it. The drawbridge was still up. In very bad shape, but still up. "GAAAH!" R-Type shouted, quite miffed at losing his codecracker. From above, he heard a voice: "Heh heh. Whatta yutz." Oh Jesus. He knew who it was. So much for the 'slight edge'. Unless he could get that goddamned gate down. He ran a quick scope on the door's integrity, and got a mildly comforting response: he'd seen tougher datawalls on a Commodore 6.4T. Hell, he could probably crash this thing himself. He raised his arm and started the firing sequence for the Railgun's attack subroutine. "All forces!" he called. "Get ready to move and move fast!!" The railgun was charged and ready to go. He issued the firing command-- And at that moment, and for the second time that evening, something Impossible happened: The fortress, the entire vast Internet Center node... *disappeared*. Vanished. R-Type's railgun spike sailed through space and, finding no target, simply fizzled out. "Baaah?!?" R-Type remarked. Several of the ACIs and the more sentient Wraiths bore similar expressions of disbelief. "That's IMPOSSIBLE!!" he shouted at no one in particular. "They CAN'T shut it down -- not in less than five minutes!!!" Fuck. Well, this was completely ballsed up, and with the site somehow shut down there was nothing at all GENOM could do. Now he had a legit excuse for cutting his losses and getting the snord out of there. Finally. <**ERROR**,> his deck replied. Oh shit. "What the fuck...?!" Hell of a time to have something like this happen, and for no visible reason. It seemed that someone or something was blocking him, but... who or what? He scanned the area frantically and detected nothing. What was holding him?! And at that moment, all hell broke loose. The "sky" over the spot where the fortress had been, crackled with energy in a display very similar to atmospheric lightning. And then it split open and poured blue light on the landscape, obscuring -- in fact *erasing* -- most of the detail from this area of cyberspace. In the middle of the lightstorm, R-Type thought he could make out a dozen or so icons dropping to the plane of the cyberspace node. Then, with a thunderclap, the sky closed up again, leaving nothing behind but the endless grid of cyberspace. Most of the Intercenter's guardians had been dumped offline when their machine went down, but this was of little consolation, because R-Type still recognized most of the icons that confronted him. The glittering blue-silver armored one with the faceless bowl helmet had to be Gryphon, and the large black manshape with all the silver circuitry bits was undoubtedly MegaZone. To Gryphon's right was another form, similarly encased in armor, although this one's was not the angular, recognizable GRF-3N shape, but rather gleaming CVR-3 and what seemed to be a Battler Cyclone, which was apparently an attack/defense daemon of some kind. That would be ReRob. [Oh great... the WDF found out...] Then again, he supposed he shouldn't be surprised about that. That was probably who the message sender had called, after all. Arrayed behind them were several more that R-Type thought he recognized. The dark-haired gent in the mosh boots and leather jacket would be Crimson. The guy with the chain mail and the huge sword was undoubtedly Tracker. The stick figure with the shock of unruly blond hair had to be Jer Johnson, and the 40's Gangster Type in the Blue Pin-Stripe and Black Fedora was clearly Lightnin. The ninja with the purple costume and the Information Society logo on his chest had to be /dev/null, and the unassuming dark haired gent in the VERY overstuffed grey canvas jacket was Android, apparently. Next to him was Eric "ear" Rasmussen, the Man with the Very Orange Feet. It wasn't hard to guess who the raven-haired beauty next to MegaZone was. Just wonderful. Of all the people appearing, Hazard was the one he was least inclined to confront. How could he confront someone he had always idolized? Especially when *he* was on the "wrong side", as it were? Thank you, LaPlante, for obviously fucking up so badly that you attracted the attention of practically everyone in GweepCo. This was Very Exceedingly Bad... Scattered among the gweeps were a few of the Sysops of Turing, too: R-Type recognized Larry "Entropy" Foard's techno-knight, and the reality-modeled Veltari Salusian form of Dr. Slappi Sqirl, the Turing Chair-Sysop, handbag, green hat and all. There was Dr. Teng Chitaia and Dr. Rebecca Stallman of Earth, and Mixta Vardis-Al of Dralas. And there was none other than Mainframe, from Cybertron... "Bad thing, bad, bad thing... very bad thing..." R-Type mumbled as he scrolled through the list of icons. "Very, very, horrendously exceedingly bad thing..." And then, to top it all off, several telnet gates behind the Turing defenders opened up, and out poured what had to be at least two legions of Imperial Salusian Cyber- Marines, effectively matching GENOM's contingent entity to entity. And with them came many more familiar icons: John "macquivr" Todd, Liz Stewart, Josh "mute" Brandt, Ralph Valentino, Mike "elric" Voorhis... Good Lord, *everyone* in GweepCo was here. "Fuck me..." R-Type wheezed. He tried to punch out again, got the same error message again. Fuck. This was *BAD*... Then suddenly he was not alone. Behind him the telnet gates opened up and the long-awaited Wraith reinforcements began to pour through, accompanied by several more LAPCIS ACIs, and another STACIS CI: a young blond girl named Lufy, one of GENOM's most decorated combat ACIs. No other STACIS ACIs appeared. Just as well; R-Type wanted no more of his own creations involved in this debacle. Then, with a flittering cybertransit effect similar to the transporter effect from Star Trek: The Next Generation, there appeared next to R- Type the four Sysops of Turing that GENOM had turned: there was Dr. Max Morris of Earth, and the Vruskian J'itaya K'kr'k, who had hoped that GENOM's takeover would increase the Net's efficiency. Next to him was the squat Dalek tank-form of Vardak Emaya Vitan Vak, the system's only Skarosian operator. And, of course, the Turing Turncoat himself, Charles Foreman LaPlante, currently dressed in rather scorched-looking techno-samurai armor very similar to R-Type's. R-Type was not at all undecided over whether or not he should be happy LaPlante was alive. He wasn't. It was that simple. He had an intense feeling that something was missing from this little get-together, as though there was someone or something that should be there but wasn't. Maybe it had something to do with why he couldn't punch out of this mess before he got hosed? He had no time to think about it any further, though, because a voice boomed across the expanse: "Attention, GENOM forces," announced the circuit-man. "You have attempted to take over a public facility for corporate usage. This is in violation of Section 2, Subsection 9 of the Internet Charter and comes under the clauses of Part 5, Wedge Defense Force Code." Judging by its voice it was quite obviously the WDF commander, as R-Type had suspected. "CEASE AND DESIST." Now R-Type was perfectly willing to do just that, and in another situation he would have raised his hands in surrender and ordered all his forces to do the same. And they most likely would have understood, the situation being as screwed as it was. The smart warrior knew a hopeless fight when he saw one, and knew when to retreat so he could fight another day. But, unfortunately, R-Type was no longer in a position to be giving orders. LaPlante -- special thanks to Largo for this grand decision -- had been given mission seniority, and he was not interested in surrender. "KILL THEM!" he shouted, and the entire contingent surged forward. Battle was joined. R-Type was thankful for the fact that he currently existed as Rai Oyasumi and not Larry Mann, that his callsign was currently 'ThunderKnight' and not 'R-Type'. That wasn't much of a consolation, though. It might protect his identity but it wasn't going to protect his life from the black software that was almost certainly about to be unleashed. For one instant he wondered if he *should* have packed some black software. No, no killers. He didn't want to kill anyone here. Except maybe LaPlante, but that was different. He called up his most powerful Shield program, which provided him with a full- length body shield, and a defensive Flatline sword program which would dump whoever it hit offline and fry their cyberdeck so they couldn't get back on. And not a minute too soon, as several and varied attacks began to sail back and forth. He stayed with the throng of Wraiths and GENOM personnel who were now engaging the WDF icons, but he hung toward the rear. Not *too* far back; he didn't want to look like a deserter; if LaPlante survived this he could seriously fuck up R-Type's clout by calling him a deserter. (Yahright, but R-Type didn't want to take that chance.) Nobody seemed to notice, though; they were too busy following LaPlante's orders and defending themselves now. From the rear of the battlefield, he had a much better view of the complete and utter chaos that had begun, as Cyber-Wraiths and Cyber-Marines went after each other, dropping and de-rezzing each other like flies. The lower-echelon warriors of each side were quickly dispatched, either Dumped or Flatlined by said routines, or flat-out killed by black programs. Eventually the strongest warriors, namely the renegade Sysops and the guardians, began having at it. R-Type, when he wasn't taking a few seconds to flatline an attacking Cyber-Marine or dodge a Hellbolt, or engaged in combat with the Sysops and gweeps himself, watched with a morbid fascination as they went after each other with many and varied attacks. Here Gryphon reduced one of the stronger Wraiths to a cloud of free errors with a bolt from his "particle gun"; there the purple ninja "stumbled" and ran another through with his outstretched sword, righting himself with the impact. Here one of Dr. Sqirl's anvils crushed one and nearly took out the Dalek Sysop in the process. There, MegaZone went after LaPlante, attacking him with his (so to speak) bare hands. It was complete and utter chaos, and from where he was, R-Type could see that the guardians were getting the upper hand. The renegades were losing ground, being kept off balance by the almost constant aerial attacks produced by Dr. Sqirl. This was not good. About then -- and since he still couldn't sign off -- R-Type's sense of loyalty/duty returned: he couldn't just sit there and watch them be slaughtered. He was on their team. It was a fucked-up team, but it was *his* team nevertheless; he had to do something to help. Doing a quick analysis of the situation, he decided that the thing that was giving his people the worst problem was the black software which Dr. Sqirl was taking great delight in using. If he could get her out of the picture, it might even the odds again. Those anvils just had to stop; it was that simple. He powered up a Dump utility and sighted on her. At the moment she was concentrating on knocking down the Dalek's code shell; maybe in that moment he could hit her, knock her offline. The Dump program wouldn't do any damage, of course, but in the time it took for her to log back on, the tide could turn. He'd probably have to kick several others off in this manner as well; Dr. Sqirl would be the first. Dr. Sqirl was, with an evil grin on her face, preparing to drop an anvil on the Dalek when R-Type's program gave a READY signal. He aimed and issued the rapid-firing command; he'd need to use this program several times in a big hurry... ...but before it could execute, there was a wrenching signal distortion, and he was yanked away. This felt unsettlingly like being caught in a noisestorm, except that this felt quite deliberate, as if someone or something had caused a Netsplit and pushed him into it on purpose. he wondered. "Gravity" reversed itself, and he felt the universe tilting under him. Then he crashed to his back, landing on something soft. Opening his virtual eyes, he looked around, and found himself in a gridroom about 10 "feet" square, lying on a large soft mat. In the corner, an icon was standing... No, not an icon... A *person*. This wasn't a bit-and-volt replica of some user connecting from the outside; R-Type could *feel* that. This was *someone*, someone who lived here, in the Net. Someone who belonged here. And R-Type had the sudden feeling that he did *not*. "I'm sorry," said the woman, in a beautiful and melodic voice. "But I couldn't let you do that." R-Type just stared at her for a moment, still trying to decipher just what had happened. She was very beautiful, with silvery hair and a slender build. R-Type thought she seemed familiar, felt like he should know her, but try as he might he could not place her. It seemed like a cheesy question to ask, but he did it anyway: "Who... who are you?" She smiled quietly, as if more privately than outwardly amused, and her golden eyes twinkled. As she walked across the room, her silver hair slowly turned green, and the diaphanous gown she was wearing seemed to congeal, darken, and solidify around her, becoming a red jumpsuit with a checkerboard design over one front pocket. "Most people call me Eve," she said. Eve...? A huge memory block disappeared rapidly. EVE-1A?! Ho-ly shit... could this really be happening? For a moment he forgot how to speak; this was nothing short of incredible. She looked at him. Or maybe through him. He really couldn't be sure. "I suppose there would be little point in asking you what you think you're trying to pull, Larry." R-Type froze. He heard his heart (he supposed) stop, then start beating so rapidly he feared it would explode. Silently his mouth formed the words "oh shit". *Nobody* was supposed to know that Rai Oyasumi was really Larry Mann (with the possible exception of LaPlante and Largo). That cover had been designed very carefully, designed to be impenetrable! He felt himself starting to inch backwards, away from her. "There's no need to be afraid," Eve said. Suddenly there was nothing supporting R-Type, and he fell to the floor with a thud. Correction: the ground. They were apparently in a park. It was springtime, and the birds were chirping. R-Type looked like himself now, only much younger -- in his early 20s or so, probably the same age as Eve appeared to be -- than he actually was at the moment. He was dressed casually, for the weather. So was Eve, in the jeans-sneakers-denim-jacket ensemble favored by college students everywhere. "It was only a simple question," she said. "Uh..." R-Type was still having trouble regaining his command of the Standard language. Good Lord, here he was, next to the most powerful Autonomic Cybernetic Intelligence in the known galaxy, maybe even the known universe. And she was obviously in complete control of this environment, wherever it was. He began to feel kind of stupid for fumbling as badly as he was. Just then, with a start, he realized that the birds in the park were chirping the tune of Pachelbel's "Canon in D". He loved the tune quite a bit, but he'd never heard it presented quite this way. "This is weird..." he mumbled, his eyes panning across the scene. "This isn't weird," Eve said with a sunny smile. Suddenly he was weightless and looking down at the Crab Nebula, which he appeared to be standing on, and rotating slowly. "This," said Eve, dressed in a cheesy typical bad-SF-film clear-bubble-helmet space suit and perched on a nearby spiral galaxy's arm, "is weird." And they were back in the park again. "There's something different about you, R-Type," she said. She was sitting right next to him. "You're not like those other attackers. You don't have any black utilities at all in memory. In fact you don't have anything except that carrier-killer, the Railgun, and your defensive equipment. Seems to me your heart isn't in this. And then there's that supposed cover of yours. If your company is attacking Turing, why not stand up and support them proudly, and use your own name? Doesn't seem right to me..." R-Type was suddenly very bundled-feeling. There was a good reason for this: he was dressed in a heavy parka, gloves, boots, and ski pants. They seemed to be standing on a snowy plain. Saturn (or at least, a ringed gas giant) loomed menacingly in the purple sky. Eve pushed her ski goggles up on her wool-capped forehead. "So, what's going on, anyway?" R-Type had gotten so caught up in the change of scenery and the photorealistic -- no, more like hyperrealistic -- quality of all the imagery that he'd completely forgotten what she'd asked. "Er, sorry... what was the question?" Eve looked mildly irked, then smiled again. R-Type was much warmer. They were underwater. Eve's hair was now red, and she seemed to have become a mermaid. R-Type dared not look at himself. "I *said*, you're obviously not as gung-ho as the rest of those GENOM attackers, so what's your motivation?" An answer to that question came, and it was the honest-to-God truth, as far as he could tell. Trouble was he'd heard or seen it in one too many movies and books, seen it used as an excuse for some evil stuff. It sounded hokey as hell. But, it was also the truth: "Would you believe I'm 'just following orders'?" "I could believe that." With a difference so distinct it almost hit physically, the water was gone. They were in the biggest, most ornate bloody ballroom R-Type had ever seen, real or otherwise. Eve had returned to fully human form; her hair was brown now, and she was dressed in an ornate golden ball gown and high white gloves. An orchestra started playing. She took R-Type's hand and began to dance with him to what sounded like a Bavarian waltz. R-Type felt... hairy. (And he FORCED himself to concentrate: DANCING FURNITURE?!) "It seems to me you're caught. You feel like a trapped animal, and I don't think it's because of me." "Uh, erm--" he was startled by the growl his voice had become, but he quickly reminded himself not to freak out. That would probably be a bad idea right now. "Well... no, it's not you... I mean... this *was* hardly the ideal time for us to take a stab at Turing III." At last he'd spoken something resembling a coherent sentence. His confidence had returned a little. "They just didn't understand what they were dealing with." Disoriented momentarily, R-Type regained his bearings to realize that he was in the passenger seat of a car. The photorealistic quality of the reality had slipped to something very poor, but it gave the impression of being *intentionally* poor: there were exaggerated motion lines and a lot of truly *bad* bits of scenery motion in the background. Eve, driving the car around the badly animated mountain road, shouted over the roar of the wind: "And what is it, you think, that they ARE dealing with?" No sense in holding back, R-Type decided. It would be quite a relief to say this: "They're dealing with gweeps," he called over the wind. "Which makes 1:30 AM the worst possible time to do something like this. They were just begging for a foul-up. There's a reason why 2200 to 0200 is called the gweepning, after all." Motion stopped. R-Type almost fell on his face. It was cold and foggy. Eve was dressed in a trench coat and fedora hat. A large clock tower bonged dolorously in the background. "So it's more a matter of bad timing than anything else?" "Horrible timing. A better time to take a place like Turing by surprise would be noon hour. I tried to tell them that but they wouldn't listen to me--" He trailed off. Should he have said that? (When he trailed off, the clock started bonging the Jeopardy! theme...) They were on the Moon, in bathing suits, stretched out on blankets under a large stripey umbrella. Somewhere, a radio was playing "Beach Blanket Bingo". "You could be right. I encouraged security to be increased during the noon to five shift, actually, on the assumption that GENOM's operational planners would have a little more sense than Ihara and Grubb gave gridbugs." She smeared a bit of sunblock on her arm, adjusted her shades, passed him the bottle of lotion, and said: "But apparently, that wasn't the case. You didn't answer my question, though. WHY take the Intercenter? And why are YOU, personally, involved? I was under the impression that Dr. Lawrence Robert Mann, Ph.D., was a biocybernetics researcher." R-Type was in the middle of applying the lotion to his own arms when that last sentence stopped him in mid-rub. She'd obviously done some digging. Well, actually it wasn't a big secret that he was a biocybe person. Why was he personally involved? That dealt with some issues he would rather not deal with right now. He could answer the first question, though, although his heart wasn't really in the answer: "Why take the Intercenter? If I understood the planners correctly, it'd give GENOM a monopoly on the communications networks. I know for a fact there was at least one Sysop who thinks our presence would improve the efficiency of the Net." They were on the roof of a very tall building, sitting with their feet dangling over the edge of the roof. R-Type fought vertigo for a moment. "That's ridiculous. GENOM could never hold the Net, and even if it did, alternets would spring up within weeks. There can't be any such thing as a cyberspace monopoly. But then, you wouldn't know that, would you?" She shrugged. "Assuming, for a moment, that you believed such a thing possible, why be involved with it? It's hardly your field." Why, indeed? He'd known all along that the whole cyberspace monopoly idea was bullshit. If the plan had succeeded the Internet would collapse in favor of the Alternets. He knew that. So why was he here? Why was he involved? He had reasons, but did he *really* want to tell *Eve* what they were? No, not really. He wasn't ready to give a long list of his motivations for associating with Charles LaPlante, a known traitor to the WDF. Even after 300 years he still had the damndest time explaining himself when confronted unexpectedly on any subject; he never had "good" (in his opinion) answers to a question until about 15 minutes after it had been asked. Nevertheless, Eve expected an answer right away, and he had to find one that was true, if a bit vague. He found it: "I was a computer scientist before I was a biocybe tech. Hell, I was a gweep. I've always had that Netrunner urge in me. Largo probably had his reasons for singling me out -- most of which don't make sense because he didn't listen to a word I said -- but I didn't ask why. He wanted me to lead the contingent which was going to take the fortress, so I did. Well, I *tried*. I just followed my orders, and he sent me down there..." This wasn't making much sense, he felt, and he knew Eve was going to push for more. Things he didn't feel like talking about. He wanted off of this subject. "...I *suppose* it's 'down there'," he fumbled, looking around. "All these, um, 'scene changes' are a little disorienting." Yahright, try totally confusing. "Scene changes?" They were walking through dark catacombs. Eve, in front of him, was wearing a leather jacket and fedora, with a bullwhip on her belt and carrying a torch. R-Type felt something on his head, and discovered he was wearing a fez. Eve turned, smiled, pinched his cheek and kissed his nose, and said: "Just a little thing I do." Then she strode forward, leading the way down the tunnel. Several rats and mice scurried past. R-Type nearly stepped on one, and could have sworn he heard it say "Yipe--NARF!" as it dodged aside. Of course, it must have been his imagination. "Changing the background relaxes me," Eve continued. "Just concentrate on something stable, something that doesn't change. My face, for example, or your session manager icon." R-Type decided that Eve's face was indeed the thing to concentrate on. He was, after all, quite taken with those golden eyes of hers. The ACI designer in him was having a field day just observing how advanced and powerful she was. Numerous theories abounded concerning her origin; who programmed her, etc. He'd love to get a chance to experiment with the computer system, whatever it was, that created her. Maybe *this* was the system he needed to experiment with, not LAPCIS... "Thank you," he said. He was possessed of a sudden desire to make small talk, in the fervent hope that he could get this conversation on a different track. The more he talked, the more likely it was that his head would be separated from his body when Largo read the reports. "Um, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you're very fascinating, Eve. I'd love to, well for lack of a better phrase, 'get to know you better'. I mean, I'd love to meet whoever it is that made your existence possible." Was he rambling? Probably. Eve smirked a bit. "That's a creative way to change the subject," she observed. "Damn she's good," R-Type mumbled to the closest wall. Well, it was worth a try. They were in a car stuck in Irvine gridlock (a combination of both ground- and aircar traffic; gridlock was actually a rare thing in Irvine, but when it happened, like, ouch). Three black and white creatures of indeterminate type bounded over the roof, down the hood and vanished into the traffic, pursued by what looked like a very fat policeman. A snippet of music played and stopped. It was Irvine, all right, right down to the pruning on the trees and the beige paint on the houses; shit, this was the corner of Barranca Parkway and Jeffrey, *exactly* as it existed in realspace! She'd gotten this image from *somewhere*, and there weren't many image files of Irvine streets out there. He felt uneasy all of a sudden. "Perhaps you would rather just return to the battle," Eve said. "You seem to feel as if you have a duty to perform, and I must respect that." Before R-Type could protest, there were a lot of strange disruptions in the fabric of virtual space-time. When R-Type was cognitive again, he was back in the battle. Dr. Sqirl dropped her anvil on the Dalek and crashed its weapon utility. With a terrible shock, R-Type realized that *no time had passed*. *None*. He looked around quickly, reassessing the situation, and himself. As far as he could tell, everything was running as it should, with the following exceptions: 1) the Dump util he'd loaded had powered down again, 2) his Flatline program had crashed, so he had no other weapons, and 3) there was a fez on his head. He had no time to think about the last two right now, however. He hastily ran the Dump's startup sequence again, pre-setting it for rapid fire. He needed that utility if he was going to do anything here. In the meantime all he could do was wait and watch: Tracker and J'itaya were pounding away at each other. The Vrusk's ambidexterity gave him a slight edge when fighting with multiple swords, but Tracker was wearing him down with his own huge weapon, and finally knocked one of his swords away. One slash later, J'itaya K'kr'k vanished in a flash of electrons. Zoner ducked a Needlestorm from LaPlante and replied with a Firestarter; it missed, darted past R-Type, and ashed one of the Wraiths next to him. That was close... LaPlante caught Zoner with his next Needlestorm, weakening his signal ratio, and then prepared a Shatterbolt, which might actually have a chance of flatlining him -- but Eve appeared, then, standing behind LaPlante. She tapped him on the shoulder as he prepared to fire, and as he turned around, she said: "I'm sorry, Mr. LaPlante, but I can't allow you to do that." Time had ceased to function again. The battle was frozen -- only LaPlante, Eve, and, to his surprise, R-Type had proper signal. With a shock, R-Type realized that he had been left in the loop, so to speak, deliberately. Eve wanted him to see what happened. What happened on LaPlante's part was predictable; he retargeted his Shatterbolt at Eve, who was much too close to miss. "Don't do that," Eve instructed him. "If you do, you will regret it. I don't want to hurt you, Mr. LaPlante." "DIE!" LaPlante replied, and fired. The Shatterbolt fizzled and vanished, and, as LaPlante's shocked eyes met Eve's sad ones, she raised her hand and made a simple waving-away gesture. Charles Foreman LaPlante de-resolved like a statue of sand in a heavy wind, scattering into a million twinkling bits which flickered out as they cascaded away. "Gah!" R-Type remarked. His emotions about that were *very* mixed. Eve turned sadly to Larry and said, "I try to give everyone a chance... but some people do not want it." She sighed and changed the subject. "Since this conversation seems to be stalled around your unwillingness to answer my question, why don't I take a stab at answering it FOR you?" R-Type said nothing. He felt rather helpless. Talking about this whole matter could get him killed, after all. But suppose Eve knew everything already...? It wasn't impossible, and if *he* didn't actually say anything more... Eve read his silence correctly. She understood his situation perfectly, but now it was time to push harder. She looked at him, transfixed him like a bug on a plate with the steady gaze of those amazing gold eyes of hers, and said, slowly and distinctly as she walked toward him with a measured stride: "I think you feel you owe something to GENOM. I think you're a man who belongs in the Wedge, who's caught between his sense of obligation and his nature. I think you're feeling trapped. I think they have some hold over you, now that you've been with them so long, and it's more than just your conscience. I think you deserve another shot. And I think I'll be seeing you again." She reached over, took the nape of his neck in her hand, and kissed him. Then, she was gone. Time returned to normal, and Zoner looked confused for a moment before turning and erasing a Wraith-Commander as Dr. Sqirl dropped an Anvil on it simultaneously. "Heh, whatta yutz," Slappi snickered. "Y'know," she said to Zoner as she dusted her hands off. "You remind me of a very young T- 1000." And with that she waded back into the fray, laying about her savagely with her handbag and crashing most of the few remaining Wraiths with it. "Unique..." R-Type muttered. "Very unique..." About then his Dump util reported READY. Now to select a target... Gryphon sent a spread of bolts into the Dalek, cracking its datacase and de-rezzing its armor utility; Tracker waded in with his huge sword and hacked it in half along the rent. Screaming an electronic death shriek, it vanished completely. R-Type scanned the battlefield, and realized he could find nobody worth assisting. The Wraiths were already decimated. The renegade Sysops had been destroyed, as far as he could tell. Even the ACIs had vanished, whether fled or crashed he didn't know. He hoped to heaven Battia and Lufy were all right. He lowered his firing arm in disbelief. Everyone here from GENOM was dying or dead. It was just him........ and them. Damn it, he KNEW these people, some of them. What had he been THINKING? He took a step backward as they began to advance on him. And then, suddenly... ...with a painful bang, his head hit the desk, and he started violently with the blossom of pain that spread across his forehead. The violent motion toppled him over on his back in a tangle of desk chair and cybercables, which pulled free of his deck to whip almost comically around and tangle in the back of the chair. Reflexively turning up his pain editor, he glanced upward at the light fixture. He was back in realspace. What the hell had just happened? He clambered to his feet, his aging joints protesting vehemently. At the biological age of 80 his body just didn't have the kind of zip that his brain did. But he wouldn't need a RETRO session until 2290, or thereabouts. He righted the chair and took a look at his cyberdeck. It appeared to be undamaged. The last lines of text on the display buffer read: @$#!^23423adlk*23)(. NO CARRIER [Line noise??] R-Type thought. [On a secure line like this one??] Not likely. Nor was it likely that a chance noisestorm had booted him off the Net at exactly the most convenient time. Just then he noticed another line had appeared in the display. You have new mail. Hm? He typed "inc" on the keyboard. Instead of going to a mail index like it was supposed to, the deck went straight to the message: Received: by genom.com from localhost with SMTP id AB33014 (4.05c/IDA-1.4.4 for ) Path: !genom!lmann@genom.com Content-Type: Text To: lmann@genom.com From: eve@net Subject: Have a nice day. Larry, I hope you enjoyed your little tour of my domain. I hope it taught you something. Just remember, it never hurts to help. - E. PS. Merry Christmas, you're alive. :-) PPS. This message will self-destruct. EOF. A few seconds later, the message erased itself from his deck's screen, and from memory. He had, according to the path, apparently mailed it to himself. But he had *not* been on his "lmann" account during this run... He pressed the OFF button on his deck and it immediately fell silent, then he sank back in his chair, lost in thought. She'd been right about him. She was *good*, that went without saying. She probably knew everything about him. Whether that was good or bad he couldn't know, and probably didn't *want* to know. He wasn't ready for that kind of knowledge, not right now. This was going to stay with him for quite some time. He wouldn't be able to log on to Rigel, or to exist as Rai Oyasumi, for a long time. Big deal; he wasn't going to be doing any decking for a long time anyway. There were going to be a lot of changes once Largo found out-- He came to his senses. He still had a job to do. He had to find out if any of the Sysops were still alive, and if so, since he was now apparently the senior officer of the operation by default, he would have to arrange extractions for them. It was very important to at least try and find LaPlante. There were still some secrets of ACI technology that LaPlante had yet to explain to him, if he was still capable of that. Not only that, he had to get a body count: there were probably thousands of very fresh corpses all across the galaxy now. Arrangements would have to be made. And this whole debacle was going to require a lot of explaining to Largo, and R-Type would have to be the one to do it, unless he could track down LaPlante... He got up and unhooked his deck from the transmission lines, packed it in its carrying case and headed out of the office. This part of the job was more suited to GENOM's razormen. He needed to make a couple phone calls... * * * The Cyberbattle of Turing III. One of the least known, but costliest battles in history. Hundreds of people dead, thousands of programs crashed or destroyed. Battia had survived, obviously. Lufy had not, but a lot of the enemy died before they took her out. He'd only kept his skin because he successfully led recovery troops on a dangerous extraction to recover LaPlante, and helped create a new identity for him. As always, he'd made an effort to keep his role as invisible as possible -- which was good, because everyone else involved in the coverup died messily, and that included "Mr. Foreman" himself. (That had, in final analysis, been no great loss.) So what did the WDF think of him? He didn't know, and couldn't know. He could only assume, based on the attitudes he knew, and what had happened to those around him, that they did not think highly of anyone among the GENOM elite. Would they think more highly of him if he quit? Would their opinion of him be affected by the WDF personnel he'd actually come in contact with? And if so, would that have a positive or negative effect? Could he risk quitting to try and impress them? No going back, and if it fell through what would he do then...? But why be so worried about quitting? He did have enough money to last for years, after all, and God knew how many companies would be all too eager to snap him up and acquire his talents for their own use. Acquiring nanotanks and RETRO would not be that diffcult, really. Nobody would pursue him if he deserted, now that the military division was decimated. You would think that, given all this knowledge, it would be easy to break away from the company and put that life of darkness and corruption behind him. But it wasn't that simple. It *wasn't* just a life of darkness and corruption. GENOM had made some truly honorable accomplishments possible. And, well, to be perfectly and truly honest, there was something about the phrase "I work for GENOM" that rang a pleasant bell in his mind. There was something about being a part of what, even now, was still the single most powerful corporate entity in the galaxy. There was something about the title "Chief Biocyberneticist" that rang well, something about all the awards and commendations, about all the legitimate business colleagues, friends he'd made through GENOM, about all the *good* things GENOM did for him, the projects they'd funded, the ideas they'd tried, about all the contributions he made which improved the standing and power of the company, about all the trust GENOM had placed in him... ...trust in the form of a hand in their blackest schemes... but also trust in the sensitive research projects which had earned him awards in the legitimate world... and had made GENOM stronger (was *that* good or bad?)... Damn it. What choice to make? *Could* a choice be made? He got to his feet, perhaps a little too quickly, and walked out of the office, leaving the lights on. Behind him the sun continued to rise, indifferent to such matters as his. He moved into the darkened corridors of the building, for the most part just wandering randomly from place to place, trying to sort out his thoughts, trying to find the right answer to this most difficult question, if there even was one. Oh well, at least he'd figured out what the source of his angst was. Now if he could just find the answer... Although he had no way of knowing it, the answer, as fate would have it, was fast approaching. Daggerdisc, a Corellian Heavy Industries YT-1312 light starfreighter, screamed through hyperspace at 350% of the YT-13xy series' rated maximum hyperdrive speed. On board it were three people, two of whom were sleeping. A light burning in the ship's portside-slung cockpit would identify the presence of the remaining crew member, who was sitting at the pilot's station, reading a text file in the blue glow of the command terminal. "Show me his general information again," said Gryphon to the terminal, and it beeped and obediently scrolled up some information for him. Real name: Lawrence Robert Mann Born: May 29, 1971; Canandaigua, New York (United States, Earth) Current biological age: 34 Height: 6'4" Weight: ~200 lbs. Hair: Dark brown, waist-length Eyes: Kiroshi optics, brown tone (Matches original eye color.) --ED/TRA-- - Computer Science :: B.S., M.B.A., Ph.D., University of California Irvine - Engineering :: B.S., California Institute of Technology - M.B.A., New Caledonia Polytechnic Institute - Biocybernetics :: M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology - M.D. Certification :: [Obtained through GENOM programs & work] - Security Force training - CyberWraith training - Multiple awards and commendations for various achievements in several fields within the corporation [refer to main dossier for specific information] --SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS-- - Designer, Sanjiyan(tm) Biomanipulation Framework - Primary Designer, Trinetra(tm) Nanochine/Nanite System [= Above systems have been integrated into a package known as "Sanjiyan-Trinetra Biotechnology Framework System"] - Designer, Sanjiyan-Trinetra Autonomic Cybernetic Intelligence Standard (STACIS). Latest version 2.2, released January 2295. [= System is rumored capable of running multiple CI personas on a single driver and generating Spenglers. Rumors notwithstanding, it is one of the most sophisticated protocols in the galaxy. -E] [= Noteworthy CIs include: "Battia" : Majordomo ACI of GENOM's core mainframe "Lufy" : Halstead Combat ACI (terminated 2270 A.D.) "Catty" : Intelligence ACI [current position unknown]] - Designer, Mann Systems 101, 505, and 1001-series BioSculpt(tm) Tanks - Designer, Victory-class Star Destroyer - Co-designer, Imperial-class Star Destroyer - Co-designer, GENOM 33/S Replicant series and related designs - Co-designer, Sanjiyan RETRO(tm) Life-Extension System -- ADDITIONAL DATA (Caution: Classified; Verify clearance)-- - Co-designer, ICZER Project : Holds all rights to program design - Involved in AST/Tyrell Buyouts in 2020 - Involved in Turing III Cyberbattle, 2270, and subsequent Foreman Coverup - Involved in Gotterdammerung Project, 2287-2288 = Listed as Primary Designer for "Experiment 101-E" - Personal aide to Largo, 2326-2336 - Co-designer, AT&T Project, 2382-2388 - Technical designs are very prevalent in GENOM's armada; design paradigm of Victory and Imperial-class Star Destroyers used for Dreadnaught and Interdictor-type vessels as well (in fact, you could say that Dr. Mann is responsible for the entire 'motif', as it were, of the GENOM Military Arm. V-) --SOME LIFE EVENTS-- 1985 - Parental divorce; both sides remarried, most family contact lost 1989 - Graduated Yucaipa High School (Yucaipa, California). Multiple awards for drama club participation. Enrolled at UC Irvine. 1991 - Nearly disqualified from UCI due to poor performance (read: very bad math skills). Visited by a GENOM representative that year; performance inexplicably skyrocketed afterwards. 1993 - Graduated UCI /w/ honors. Immediately hired by GENOM as a high-level CompSci consultant. Began working on Sanjiyan and Trinetra systemry shortly afterward. 199x - Hired by AST Research after GENOM's collapse post-Neo-Worcester 2020 - Returned to GENOM following the AST/Tyrell buyouts. (Had already been involved with GENOM a couple years prior.) 2023- 2034- Tokyo residency. Instrumental in hostile takeover of Mishima Industries, Japan's largest industrial company 2051 - RETRO(tm) created and used successfully "Right, right. Skip ahead, anything interesting... you know what I want to see." 2220- 2226- New America Colony residency. Consolidated 95% of the colony's infrastructure under GENOM control. Colony living standard improved dramatically as a result. "Interesting. What else?" [2289 - Attempted suicide following the successful execution of ] [ Gotterdammerung. Attempt failed. No additional attempts ] [ ever made; evidently he straightened himself out. ] 2330- 2336- New Japan residence. Assisted in regaining control of GENOM New Japan, whose performance was considered far too low in Largo's eyes "Veeeeeeeery eeeeenteresteeeng. Especially the timing." 2375- Present- Irvine residence. "Hmm. Dry. Technical... Eve, Vision, give me your own impressions." "He's one of the reasons GENOM has been so successful in the legit corporate world," Vision said, appearing on the VDT. "That much is obvious. He also helped some of their key Black ops to succeed. He's hard to pin down because his operating style is very subtle and background-oriented -- not that I can blame him for that. That tends to make him sort of the "unknown hero" of the company when it comes to the darker ops. "That aside," said Eve as she subdivided the screen diagonally and took the lower half, "he -is- highly recognized for all the major inventions which made GENOM what it is today. He's very well-connected in the corporate world, and commands a lot of respect as a businessman. Also, I've dealt with him personally from time to time. I feel it necessary to point out that, considering all the cybernetics and actions he has been forced to submit to, he has retained his humanity rather well. Sheer force of will, so it would seem. "Personality-wise, he's something of a walking double-standard." "Makes sense. He's a Gemini," Vision pointed out. "Usually," Eve continued, "he tends to be easygoing and more a follower than a leader. Reports have indicated that he -is- capable of assuming complete control and becoming a very exacting leader when the situation dictates -- Yuri can provide an eyewitness account of that, if you'll recall. By nature he is independent, and more into observation than control, which often conflicts with his loyalty to his friends and comrades. He's been treading a line between the two (individualist and follower) for most of his career, and maintained his balance quite admirably, I think." Gryphon leaned back and absorbed. "Summary?" "Dr. Lawrence Mann is a good man caught on the wrong side of the tracks," Eve announced, inequivocally. "He's played the game out of necessity. And I don't believe his innermost values have ever been compromised, amazingly." "I concur," Vision said, nodding. "I don't have the same extent of contact experience with the man that Eve does, but I've seen enough of his record to agree." She grinned. "Let's bag him." Gryphon grinned in return. "Let's indeed. Thanks for your help, Eve; as soon as we drop back out of hyperspace you can head back." "It never hurts to help." "No, indeed, it doesn't... " EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT #INCLUDE (PROVING GROUNDS, PART ONE) Benjamin D. Hutchins Lawrence R. Mann (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited 24 APRIL 2389 IRVINE, CA, EARTH R-Type sat at his terminal and just stared at the screen for a while, willing himself to get it in gear and start typing. If he was going to request a corporate transfer to the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards liaison detachment, now was the time to do it, while everyone was moving round and there were still openings. (And while he had no large projects pressing here in Irvine.) He hesitated. How should he word this? The new Master of GENOM was not a man he was familiar with, and although he was reputed to be fair, reputations meant little. (Maximilien Largo had been reputed, to the general public, to be a marvelous philanthropist in _many_ of his guises throughout his history, including, Brian J. Mason, Masada Quincy, and Bill Gates.) His train of thought, already unstable, was derailed completely by the chimer to his office door. "Come in," he said in an exasperated tone of voice, turning to face the doorway. "Look, I left instructions that I was NOT to be--" He stopped dead when he realized who was standing in the door. The man in his doorway was human and on the short side, no more than five foot eight. He was stockily built, but Larry couldn't really tell much about his build thanks to his clothing. He was dressed completely wrong for GENOM's Irvine headquarters, and for a brief instant, until his mind registered _who_ it was, R-Type found himself wondering how this man had gotten in here in those rumpled blue jeans, well-worn Doc Martens, blue and white striped button shirt (unbuttoned to partially reveal what looked to be a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt), and wrinkled grey duster, let alone with that grey fedora perched on his head. Then other details of his dress registered. The rowelless spurs on his Docs, for example, and his octagonal, wire-framed glasses, behind which ice-blue eyes sparkled. His bearded face was smiling a small, almost private smile. The WDF commbadge on his duster's lapel glittered. Small Maltese crosses did the same on the epaulets. What in hell was HE doing HERE? R-Type found his voice. "Gh--um--can I help you with something?" The man in the doorway spoke, and his voice was surprisingly deep. "You're Dr. Lawrence Mann, also known as R-Type?" "That's me." Gryphon stepped into the room and extended a hand. "Gryphon, Wedge Defense Force." "To what do I owe this honor, Admiral?" Gryphon looked pained. "Please. Any friend of Yuri's deserves to call me Gryphon." He changed the subject without padding, his mind simply switching gears in mid-speak. "I'm in the system to pick up a bit of real estate, and while I'm in the area, I'm fulfilling a function as Chief Engineer of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards." "Um...which is?" "I'm scouting for talent, to put it bluntly. My own design team and several others need engineers, Virtual Labs is looking for programmers, and Robotics Division is looking for a few good cyberneticists. According to the dossier Master Caine supplied me with on you, you're all three." "What...what made you think of me, specifically?" "I told you, you're a friend of Yuri's. When she found out I was coming out this way and doing a bit of scouting, she mentioned you. Well, more than mentioned you. 'Cornered me in a conference room and exposited for half an hour or so' would be more accurate, if we were being pedantic." He grinned. "Eve threw in her two cents' worth too. You're a very popular man among the women in my life, Dr. Mann." R-Type looked sheepish. "Anyway, I'm empowered to offer you any of a number of things. A position on one of the many engineering teams currently active at UPNS; a senior consultant's position at Virtual Labs, under ReRob; a slot on the Life Sciences Division's biocybe research group; senior research engineer with Robotics; GENOM liaison attachment to any of the above if you don't want to give up your GENOM corporate position, which, given your seniority, I wouldn't blame you for." He looked at his watch. "Problem is, I have to be elsewhere in a little less than an hour, so if you don't give me an answer now, you'll have to wait a bit before we can process the forms." That grin again. R-Type was stunned. This was the kind of thing he had been, moments before, wrestling with mentally. Eris was definitely watching. "Uhm..." What the hell to say? "Sure, why not?" That wasn't it--d'oh! Let's be flippant, shall we? Surprisingly, Gryphon laughed. "Nice attitude." He took a digital assistant out of his inner coat pocket and flipped the standby switch on the side of it to the ON position. "Vision, luv, you in there?" "Of course," a woman's pretty voice replied (from where he was, R-Type couldn't see the screen). "Where else would I be, darling?" Gryphon was, apparently, quite used to this sort of treatment, and R-Type found himself suddenly, wistfully, wishing that Jilehr would be a little more like that. Then he bonked himself in the head. "Dr. Mann has, happily, chosen to join the Rebel Alliance," said Gryphon to his digital assistant. "Would you be a dear and cheat up the paperwork for us?" "I already did." Gryphon raised an eyebrow. "What, you thought he'd say no? Get real." "Um...excuse me," said Larry. "Mm?" said Gryphon, looking over the screen and cocking the _other_ eyebrow. "Could I...look at that for a second?" Gryphon indicated his digital assistant. "What, this?" Larry nodded. "Sure, knock yourself out." He handed the device to R-Type. The miniature holotechnic flatscreen had a finely resolved image of a very pretty woman, a woman he recognized almost immediately, on it. "Vision?" he said. "The same," Vision replied with a fetching wink. "Check it out, boss, he recognized me. I may not be as famous as my sister, but I get around." "I think he's thinking of other Vision, honey." "Oh." The image on the screen pouted. "That's no fun." "Uh...who is this?" asked R-Type. "This? Your guess was right, kind of. This is VISION-1, my cybernetic right arm, my trusted advisor and confidante--" "Your other half, soulmate, and electronic snugglebunny," Vision interrupted. Gryphon half-snarfed. "Yeah, yeah. Next you'll be telling people you're the second coming of HAL." "Oh," said Vision with a seductive look and an almost comical, Jessica Rabbit breathiness in her voice, "but I am, Dave. And I can do so much MORE for you than the old me could, Dave. I'll open the pod bay doors for you, Dave. I'll--" "That'll be enough out of you, Lieutenant Commander." R-Type was laughing so hard he almost dropped the digital assistant. "Now look what you did, Vision--you broke him!" "It's not my fault," she replied. "YOU brought it up." Gryphon sighed, rolling his eyes. R-Type, recovering, said to the screen, "You're an ACI?" "You bet." "What protocol?" "I don't tell people that on the first date." R-Type snickered, but kept himself under control this time. He handed the digital assistant back to Gryphon. "Amazing. Did you write her?" "In a manner of speaking." Gryphon turned his gaze to the screen. "Gotta put you back now, luv." R-Type could only imagine what Vision was doing with her video image as her voice, slowed down by about 40%, slurred, "Dddddaaaaaiiiissssssyyyyy... Dddddaaaaaaiiiiisssssyyyyy... " Gryphon turned the assistant back to standby mode and stowed it in his coat. "Listen, I've gotta buzz...do you want to stay here and arrange your own transport, or would you rather do the adventurous thing, grab whatever you can't possibly live without for the next ten or so hours and come with me? I'll arrange for your other things to be shipped after us." [I have to stay near that ACI.] R-Type shut off his terminal, picked up his briefcase, coat, and hat, and said, "Let's go!" "Adventurous. I like that. Okay...you have a car?" Gryphon asked as they walked through the building's corridors, toward the elevator. "Yup." "Want to bring it along?" "That'd be excellent, if I can." "Great." They got in the elevator and rode down to the parking garage. "I hope it's got enough space for a mini-fridge." "You brought a mini-fridge with you?" "No." Gryphon stopped next to a techno-looking motorcycle and pushed a button on the cowling; with a nifty sound effect, it folded up into a box about the size of a mini-fridge. "But it's a useful size comparison." He grabbed the handle on top of the box and picked it up. "Sure, I think it'll fit in back." On their way to the airport, R-Type tapped a few keys on the keypad next to his carphone, and the small display screen in the center of the dash activated: AJ-2 ACTIVE, AT 100% OPERATING STATUS. PERSONA 'AKI' ONLINE... Then the upper 3/4 of the screen was replaced by an image of a pretty brown-haired woman with eyeglasses, in a white blouse. "Afternoon, R- Type... what are you doing out at this hour??" "Aki, I want you to transfer all your object files and code to the car's mainframe. Please do it now." Before she answered, Gryphon saw the image change: the face and hair were the same, but the eyeglasses disappeared, replaced by a black headband, and the white dress became a black cloak. And with a slightly harsher voice, she spoke: "Excuse me??" Gryphon looked vaguely curious at this sequence of events; he'd never seen a CI behave quite like this. But wasn't one to pry; he figured things would explain themselves shortly. "You heard me, Jilehr," R-Type went on. "Download yourself to the car. I'll explain afterwards." The first image reappeared: "Beginning file transfer, 9600 megabaud..." Below, the text portion of the screen rattled off a list of files and a percentage-complete readout. After about 60 seconds, Aki announced "Transfer complete." "Now what in Hades is going on?" the second image reappeared and demanded. "We're moving to Utopia Planitia, Jilehr. Effective immediately." "Ex-cuse- me???" "Oh, cut it out. You heard me." Aki: "Have you been transferred?" R-Type grinned. "Well, sort of. But I'm being rude." He indicated the man sitting next to him. "Aki, introduce yourself to Admiral Hutchins." Aki's image turned and said "How do y--", then reacted with surprise. "Hutchins? As in Admiral *Benjamin* Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force???" Gryphon waved and said, "Yeah, that'd be me." He looked a wee bit discomfited at her tone, and smiled almost shyly. Aki was momentarily speechless, then Jilehr took over again, turning to R-Type: "Now hold on a minute: I distinctly recall that you were still no-proposal. No-hint-of-a-proposal, to be exact. Now you're moving?!" "Sure looks that way," R-Type replied. Aki: "But... but that would mean only five hours passed!" Jilehr: "How in hell could they have read the letter, made a decision, and responded so fast, even *with* subether??" "Ummm..." R-Type looked skyward; how should he word this? But Gryphon saved him the trouble: "Actually," he said with quiet amusement. "'They' just happened to be in the neighborhood, and had a recommendation ..." "I beg your pardon?" Aki asked, still confused. "I happened to be in the solar system, and I knew R-Type was interested in moving Wedgeward ... so I popped in to see if he was interested in living dangerously for a week or two." Aki blinked. Gryphon blinked back. "Oh BTW, Gryphon," R-Type interjected. "I'd like to introduce you to *my* personal aide, Mann Systems Multipersona ACI #AJ-2, STACIS version 2.2. Right now her name is Aki. She seems to have forgotten to introduce herself." Aki blushed. She had indeed forgotten. "Very pleased to meet you, Admiral Hutchins," she said, a hint of embarassment in her voice. Gryphon grinned. "The pleasure is all mine." [So this is a STACIS CI,] he added to himself. [Very sophisticated... better than LAPCIS.] Jilehr surfaced once again: "Hey there! I'm Jilehr!" She didn't bother with formalities, just cut to the chase: "So obviously you just moved RT out of Irvine. How'd you manage that?" "Jilehr! Be nice!" R-Type admonished her. To Gryphon: "Oh, and this is Aki's other personality, Jilehr. She's a bitch." "Oh I love you too, R-Type," she glared back at him. "Oh, I don't think I really had all that much to do with it," Gryphon grinned. "I think more credit belongs to the contacts he already _has_ in the WDF." [So it's true... STACIS *can* run multiple personas on one driver.] Aki looked confused, then Jilehr let out a grin. "Why R-Type you sly devil..." Very seductive tone in that voice. R-Type rolled his eyes. Gryphon snickered. "She's not normally this bad," R-Type asided to Gryphon. "Cute, Jilehr. What I want to do right now is talk to Aki. Can I talk to Aki?" "There is no Aki. There is only Zuul." "Jilehr!" Then he caught himself; getting angry might be a bad idea right now. [So the question is,] Gryphon said to himself. [Did he deliberately design a CI to piss him off, or is it an accident? Hmmm... that would indicate creative synthesis... maybe even heuristic generation.] Fortunately Aki did come back. "Thank you, Aki," R-Type said. "You're welcome," she replied. "They'll be moving my stuff out of the apartment in, uh... how *is* my stuff getting moved to UPNS, anyway?" Gryphon looked at his watch. "Federated Express should be descending on the place right... about... now." Aki appeared to notice something offscreen. "Some people from Federated Express are attempting to gain access to the apartment." R-Type glanced at Gryphon: "Whoa, nice timing!" To Aki: "Let 'em in. Supervise and make sure everything is secure, and have them dismantle the computer last." "Will do." "Unreal..." Jilehr added. "Friends in low places," Gryphon said with a grin. "FedEx got me out of a couple of jams during the Exile." [Exile?] R-Type thought. There was a term he'd never heard before. He was about to ask about when Jilehr piped in again: "Now hold on here, I still don't quite get this." This seemed to be directed at both of them. "You're telling me that in less than five hours you put through a transfer request, got *all* the paperwork filled out, got *in touch* with *movers*, and all without telling me??? How in HELL did you do that??" R-Type glanced at Gryphon. "Uh, I had a little help." Gryphon looked angelic. "Hanh?" Aki: "Um, pardon me Admiral Hutchins, but I am curious. How *did* you manage to do that?" "Oh, I didn't do it myself. I don't have the attention span." He delved into his coat and produced his digital assistant, flipping the switch. "Vision... wakey wakey... your public is calling." "Beg pardon?" "R-Type and his assistant wish to know how we processed the paperwork in less than five hours." "His what?" Vision said. "Gryph, we don't have the in-flight resources for more than one passenger. You didn't pack for this." "Uh, no Vision," R-Type said. "My assistant's an ACI. Aki, would you introduce yourself to this lovely lady?" Gryphon turned his PDA around so that it faced the dash, and Aki spoke. "Hello, I'm Aki. Mann Systems ACI number AJ-2. I'm R-Type's primary aide." "Virtual Intelligence System with Interfaced Option Notation," Vision replied. "Call me Vision. I'm Gryphon's mistress." Gryphon looked at the Oldsmobile's ceiling, and R-Type snarfed. Aki's eyes widened in the instant before her image switched: "'Mistress??' Did I hear that, RT?" Jilehr said. "Guess so," R-Type shrugged. Gryphon seemed to have taken quite an interest in the pattern of dots punched for ventilation into the fabric lining the car's ceiling. "Did I just miss something?" Vision asked. "Oh, sorry Vision," R-Type said. "This is Aki's other personality, Jilehr." He had a sudden feeling in the back of his head that these two were going to be the best of friends... NOT. "Oh, uh... hi." Vision looked vaguely confused. Did this... other personality... have some kind of problem? "Uh, chief, is it my imagination, or am I getting attitude here?" Somewhere in R-Type's consciousness an alarm sounded. This was leading in a direction he didn't think he was going to like. "Look not at me, m'lovely. You're the one who had to go and advertise." Jilehr glanced at R-Type: "Well *this* is certainly a new take on 'pocket pool', wouldn't you agree?" The alarm got louder. [Oh shit...] R-Type thought. Well, he could always shut her off if she became a pain, he figured. Gryphon snickered at her comment, but Vision didn't seem to find it amusing: "You have some problem with human/CI relationships? Shows a lack of bandwidth on your part, doesn't it? What's it matter? Love is love." Jilehr snorted: "Definitely gives new meaning to--" "Whatever you're going to say, Jilehr, don't," R-Type cut in. He definitely didn't like where this was going, and he wasn't in the mood to referee a fight between two secretaries. "Give me Aki, *now*." The image reverted. To Vision: "Now, we *do* want to know how you process paperwork so fast." Vision had by this time grasped the idea of AJ-2 having two separate personalities with the same face, and replied. "Oh, it was simple. I have a formbuster utility I kludged up in my spare time. It doesn't really take any cycle time at all to crunch standard forms." "I always need 2 to 3 cycles to process most paperwork," Aki said. "And that's with an assist from Jilehr. You must have several personalities running in order to process so quickly." "Personalities?" Vision queried. "You mean, different icons, response parameters, the whole nine yards?" Aki nodded. "Nope, it's just little old me. There's only one mind in this head, honey. Guess it's just the way I'm wired." "*One* personality?" Jilehr turned to R-Type, jerking a thumb in Vision's general direction. "She isn't too sophisticated, is she?" "You must have me mixed up with somebody who cares what her code looks like, babe. I only care about results." She paused, looking introspective. "Hmm, come to think of it, I'm not sure I even have code..." [Huh?] R-Type thought, too busy parsing this comment to prevent the next one: "Doesn't even know where her code is. Phaugh," Jilehr snorted, then looked up at Gryphon. "Does she play good nine-ball?" Gryphon opened his mouth to respond, but Vision cut him off with, "Look, you schizophrenic wonder, what'd I do to you, huh? I'm trying not to get pissed off here, but you're making it real work." R-Type decided that it was time to put a stop to this. "All right, ladies. No catfights, if you please." "Don't look at me, chum," Vision shot back. "Your cybernetic insanity started it; I was trying to be friendly, but noooOOOooo, she has to start insulting me." "Oh, go find your code," Jilehr snapped, not one to not have the last word. "It shouldn't be too hard to find in that little pocket pooltable." Vision could take no more, and burst out: "Look, you little bitch -- you wanna take me on? You push me that far and it'll be the last error you ever log. I'll crash you so hard your TAPE BACKUPS will be corrupted. Am I getting my meaning across?!" "I'd like to see you try it from there, you single-brained sex toy!" "Oooh, you're gonna *regret* that..." [Ohh... *gawd*...] R-Type dragged a hand across his face in embarassment. "All RIGHT, Jilehr! That's ENOUGH! I've got enough bad impressions-- wha?!" He stopped in mid-sentence when he realized the carphone had just activated, apparently on its own, and emitted a carrier signal. Then the speaker cut out. An instant later, every single light and readout on the car flared bright red and alarms went off. "What the FUCK?!" R-Type was suddenly thankful that he'd had the car in manual mode all this time. Something had gone horribly wrong with the computer. Reflexively he swerved out of the air-traffic path and slewed toward the side of the street. If the computer died... "Oh dear," Gryphon muttered. "Do excuse me." So saying, he connected himself to the PDA and thumbed the green button on the front of the keypad. [What the hell's going on?!] R-Type thought. Then suddenly the image on the monitor distorted wildly and went to static, and a frightened scream could be heard. "Aki?!" R-Type shouted. "AKI!" He almost forgot that he was in a moving car and nearly rammed into a tree, scaring the hell out of the pedestrians on the sidewalk. He slewed the car around again and set it down on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Fuck the keep-off regulations. Then the monitor righted itself again, and on it could be seen Vision's face: "Well, that was easier than I expected. You call this security?" R-Type felt his blood pressure increasing rapidly, and something violent was about to come out of his mouth, when he noticed that Gryphon seemed to be "behind" her, taking her arm. "Vision, cut that out," he said. "Let's go, you've made your point..." Fschhhttt... the screen went black. The car alarms fell silent and the dash lights and gauges resumed their normal operations. Gryphon jacked out of his PDA and noticed where the car had ended up. He also noted that R-Type had his eyes fixed on the dash monitor, which was still black. His face was level, but Gryphon could tell his breathing was rapid, and he was heard to mutter "Come on, Aki... come on..." "Er, sorry about that," Gryphon fumbled. "Vision's a little, er... sensitive." Finally the screen reported that Aki was back online ( R-Type sighed.), and her image rezzed onto the screen, a very terrified look on her face. "Was... was that... *necessary*???" she stammered. "I think so," Vision replied, completely serious. "Your other half has to learn something about taunting the unknown." R-Type turned to Gryphon and spoke in a level but rushed voice; he was clearly not happy at all. "How did she do that?" Gryphon looked summarily embarassed about the whole business, in a vaguely dignified way. Vision ignored R-Type and continued: "Let me make it crystal clear to you, whoeveryouare. I am not a glorified sex toy. I wasn't designed for it, and I certainly wasn't incepted for it. I'm not a plaything; I'm his lover. I _decided_ to do this. Just as if I were Human. I don't want to hear any more static, understand?" "Vision, that's enough. You've made your point." "Stay out of this," she retorted. "It's none of your business." Jilehr popped onto the screen again, looking rather harried: "You... you got lucky, bitch, next ti--GHAK!!" and she abruptly disappeared. A text message read "PERSONA 'JILEHR' LOCKED...", and Aki reappeared, looking as though she were going to start crying at any instant. Gryphon noted that R-Type's finger was resting on the ENTER key of a keypad. Obviously he'd shut Jilehr down. He looked thoroughly pissed. Then he spoke in a carefully modulated but clearly quite pissed voice. "Aki, you will maintain that lock until further notice. I do not want, or need, any more bullshit. Do I make myself clear? Good, now go to autopilot, and get us to John Wayne. Now." (Gryphon was beginning to understand what Yuri meant by "persuasive", when talking about him.) Aki nodded and disappeared, her image replaced by text which indicated that the autopilot had been activated, and also warned that the entire system would be operating at about 60% of normal efficiency with the controlling ACI partially disabled. R-Type fell back in his seat and put a hand over his eyes as, by itself, the car lifted back into the air and maneuvered into traffic again. "We'll talk about this later, Vision," Gryphon said as the car began to move, and shut off the PDA without waiting for a reply. There was an embarassed silence for a moment or two, which Gryphon finally broke: "Well, that went well. I'm very sorry about that." R-Type didn't appear to hear. He still had a hand over his eyes and seemed to be muttering to himself. "Just wonderful... Try to make a good first impression and what happens? Fuck..." "I'm... ah... sorry," Gryphon repeated. "Vision's very proud of her status with me. She gets very upset if anyone suggests that I think less of her than if she were human... as you no doubt noticed." (He finished this in a tone of voice that said 'what I just said was unnecessary, but I had already begun saying it.') R-Type seemed to be somewhere between wary and impressed, and it occurred to Gryphon that he'd forgotten to answer R-Type's earlier question. "I, uh... I guess I should explain what just happened, eh?" "I'd appreciate that," R-Type spoke in a tone which said 'your ACI just broke into my computer and tried to kill my ACI; you're damn right you're gonna explain'. "That was unlike anything I've ever seen... she hacked into my system like it was *paper*..." "Uh, well... to her, it is. How can I explain this ... most programs are like people who live in cyberspace, mm?" "Yeah..." Gryphon paused, not knowing quite how to go on. "Vision... isn't a program, in the conventional sense... hm... have you ever heard of CLULESS?" "I've *heard* of it..." R-Type ventured. "But the history books I've seen are sketchy about the subject. They called it 'the most powerful ACI platform ever written', and that was it." "Ah. Well, it's... it's a cyberspace... -force-. That's the only way to describe it. It's a pattern of logic so complex the human mind can't even begin to understand it... like the Autobot Matrix, sort of, if you've heard of that. It can do... incredible things." He paused. "And I have the only existing copy. It's sitting in the wetdrive in the back of my skull right now, happily occupying all twenty-six gigs." "Twenty-six *gigs*? That's a big Twinkie..." R-Type remarked. "CLULESS acts kind of like a programming language," Gryphon went on. "But it lives up to its name: it's 100% conceptual. If you think you know what you're doing you're doomed from the start. It's the image in your head of the finished product that's important, not the code you're feeding it... you could type in garbage if you had a clear image. And the sharper the image the better the creation... until, when you get to the highest levels of concept and the lowest of technicality, you get... you get life. Real life. The CPU cluster where Vision lives shows a Spengler flux of 3.39... and this is about as clear as the Crab Nebula, isn't it?" "*3.39*?" R-Type said in response to what had made the most sense to him. The Spengler flux was a measure of life force, theorized by Dr. Egon Spengler centuries before. Humans were the base for the scale, and so had an average flux rating of 1.0. Something three times more powerful... "Yes," Gryphon continued, hoping he wasn't losing Larry completely. "CLULESS constructs are unusual. Vision doesn't have locatable object files... she can move around at will. Cyberspace seems to almost bend around her, like space near super-high-mass objects. I won't pretend I understand it... maybe it would help if you knew where she came from." R-Type nodded, putting as much energy into parsing this as he could, trying to decipher it all. He was thankful for the car's autopilot, so he could give this his undivided attention. And for once, he was glad for the gridlock in the area; this sounded like it was going to be a long story. "During the Exile -- you probably know it as the Interregnum, or maybe the Period of Chaos -- I spent some time on New Japan. Obviously you're familiar with the original Vision, the human woman who was a singer in the thirties?" "Yes, Reika Chang. I went to a few of her concerts." "During the peak of her career, Reika and I were... very close. If you look carefully, you may see some resemblance between me and the Revengers' lead guitarist." R-Type pulled an image from his own wetdrive and looked closely at Gryphon... "Well I'll be damned..." he said. "I doubt it. Hell has new admissions standards since I sent Largo... but I digress." (R-Type was about to say "since *you* sent...?" but decided to shelve it. Later, when it mattered...) "Anyway..." Gryphon continued. "Reika and I were very much in love. In fact, we were married for a year or so." Gryphon looked downcast; apparently the next part wasn't quite as rosy. Which, considering the time period, wasn't a great surprise. "Remember in '35, when 'Don Griffin' left the Revengers and they took a year hiatus? There was a reason for that. That was the year Largo gave up administrative control of GENOM New Japan to Kwai-Chang Caine and moved to Earth. I followed him... it was my mission. Nothing mattered except Largo, Largo, always Largo. Reika said she understood, so I suppose that makes what I did a litle less reprehensible, but the fact remains, I abandoned her for the sake of my mission. I left New Japan, and I left her behind." He stopped again, as if he was gathering himself. "Anyway... "A couple of months later I ended up on Kane's World, way the hell out in the boonies. You probably haven't heard of it." (R-Type shook his head.) "I got careless, sloppy... maybe I was tired, maybe I was sick over what I did... maybe I wanted her to catch me. Anyway, I got caught, but it was by a bunch of bounty hunter types, looking to cash in on the GENOM price on my head." "Oh yes..." R-Type snorted in disgust. GENOM had, in attempt to look like the Fine Upstanding Corporation it wasn't, put a 5-million- credit bounty on the head of the 'vicious and terrible Butcher of Musashi'. Really cute. Gryphon went on: "They whacked me up with bondrugs -- tranq chemicals designed specifically to interfere with Detian regeneration. They thought they'd keep me out cold until their GENOM contact could pick me up... but they didn't know just how profoundly Omega-2 had boosted my constitution. I woke up groggy, sick, tripping my ass off basically... but I was conscious. I think -- my recollection is VERY hazy -- that I killed their guard, and I know I stole his computer... a Kiroshama lap-frame, nice machine. I went out into the city without the faintest clue who I was or what I was doing, the shit beaten out of me, filthy, half-dressed, no shoes, in winter, with an expensive- looking lapframe. Not real smart. "I had this brilliant idea that They were after me, and apparently I hid in a dumpster somewhere in New Gotham, in the freezing cold. To hear it told, I jacked into the lapframe. Why I have no clue." He was starting to pick up speed, as if the narrative itself was gathering momentum toward some kind of conclusion, and he was powerless to slow it. "CLULESS unpacked itself from my wetdrive, I don't know how or why, probably some subconscious action on my part... it latched onto the only coherent thing in my entire mind at the time: 'Where are my friends? They can save me, where are they, where is she, where is Reika... Vision, where is Vision, where where..." He paused. "And there she was." "Just..." R-Type said, mildly surprised. "Just like that?!" Gryphon nodded. The first thing she did was crack my own cortex and shut down my body, let it go into the healing coma it needed to flush the drugs; my will wasn't permitting it to do that in my rush to Get Away. The second thing was to break the Kane's World defense net and order one of the GENOM Solsats in orbit to commit a 'firing test error' on the place where the bounty hunters had headquartered... then she falsified me an identity, made me a cover story, and called me an ambulance. Just like that, like it was the simplest thing in the world." "Incredible..." R-Type said. What else to say, for Eris' sake? "For the last forty years of the Exile," Gryphon went on. "Vision was the only constant... besides the fear, of course. She's very protective of me, very proud of her status with me, and very worried, I think, that I think less of her because she isn't physical. It isn't true, but she half believes it. She's very much in love with me... and she doesn't even _realize_ what she really is in terms of sheer potential. "So you see, CLULESS is far too powerful a tool to leave lying around. I don't even allow myself to use it unless I have the clearest of images... I've only created one other with it in my entire life." It had clicked in R-Type's mind: "Eve..." Gryphon nodded. "Eve was the greatest conscious creative synthesis I've ever experienced. She is, in a very real sense, my first child... and Vision is literally _part of me_ that gained its own identity." He laughed. "Listen to me, I sound like I'm lecturing to a metamechanics class." R-Type just nodded. "I think I understand now. Gods, that kind of power... imagine what could happen if it fell into the wrong hands... Jesus." Gryphon noted that R-Type was doing an extremely good job of concealing the fact that this was scaring him shitless; any other person might not have seen it, but the Exile had taught him to recognize that carefully modulated fear factor. R-Type mumbled one more sentence: "Aki's one of my most powerful ACIs... Vision knocked her down like a rag doll..." "No," Gryphon interjected. "She knocked *Jilehr* down like a rag doll. Aki was unfortunate enough to get caught in it by the nature of STACIS. Vision and I are going to have a little talk about abuses of power later on. Still, I can understand what made her do it. Jilehr suggested that she might be... something less than she is, and it frightened her. Vision doesn't like fear, so she transferred it into anger. Frankly I'm surprised she showed as much patience as she did. Consideration for Aki, most likely." "Aki would have died if anything happened to Jilehr; they share the same object base. Aki *has* object files, unlike Vision." Gryphon sensed R-Type's anger rising again and touched his shoulder. "Larry... relax. Like I said, we'll talk about it later, and she was careful not to do any harm..." R-Type just looked at Gryphon for another moment, then finally relaxed. "Yeah... I guess you're right. I'd like to talk to her, if you wouldn't mind." Gryphon nodded and got his PDA back out, bringing it online. "Can you be civil?" he asked. "...yeah... I guess." Gryphon turned the PDA to face R-Type, and he and Vision looked at each other. Vision could tell R-Type was upset, and after seeing what happened to Aki when she hit Jilehr, she could understand why. "Vision, I want to apologize for my ACI's behavior," R-Type said in his corporate-modulated voice. "I think the impromptu move from my base computer to the car upset Jilehr a little more than I anticipated. I'm sorry." "Yeah, well," Vision replied. "That makes two of us. I shouldn't've pushed Aki around like that... Jilehr just... pushed the wrong buttons." "And she was not the only one who pushed the wrong buttons," R-Type remarked. He was obviously referring to the fact that Vision had made a blatant intrusion into his car's computer. "Don't start with me again -- I didn't --" she started, then caught herself. "Um... yeah, um..." She paused and said: "I'd... rather just forget the whole thing." "Me too," R-Type replied. "Me too. I just hope *Aki* can forget. I'm sorry for what Jilehr did, but I would appreciate if you wouldn't do that again. Please." Apparently that was asking a bit much. "That," Vision replied curtly. "is up to Jilehr. All I can promise is that I won't endanger Aki. She hasn't done anything to me." And then she turned herself off. Gryphon sighed. "Did I mention she has a hard time forgiving?" "So I noticed," R-Type said gravely. "Well, I had to ask. I care a lot about my own children, even if they are insufferable bitches sometimes." Gryphon sighed again, looking momentarily wistful. Perhaps it was his own recent fatherhood, although R-Type wouldn't know about that yet. He had read about the horrible debacle that had preceded it, though, and had wanted to personally strangle whoever had tried to hurt Kei and, through her, Yuri. Gryphon, meanwhile, reflected that he'd probably have to spend the evening in cyberspace, reassuring Vision that what Jilehr has said was nothing but unknowing malice. By this time they had finally gotten to John Wayne Spaceport, and Aki became visible to announce this fact. "Now entering spaceport zone. Do you want manual control?" "Please," R-Type replied, and took control of the car. He turned to Gryphon. "OK, which way?" Gryphon snapped out of his thought train. "Hm? Oh, sorry. I was... thinking. Left, through the maintenance gate. I'm in slip 99- A." "99-A... okay." And he turned the wheel to the left. Gryphon pulled another device out of his jacket, an old Cybergenix communicator, and flipped it open, speaking into it. "Wayne Control, this is CC-91. Request ground vehicle access to slip 99-A." "CC-91, access to 99-A is confirmed. Is departure imminent?" "Ah, that's affirmative, Wayne Control. Estimate ten minutes." "Copy, CC-91. Clear skies." "Thank you, Control. CC-91 out." He flipped the communicator closed. "There, we're clear." The gate swung open, and they had access to the pad. R-Type maneuvered his car through the loading area of John Wayne, making for the landing area where Gryphon said his ship was. R-Type recognized the slip size from its designation number; it was one of the larger shuttlebays, used primarily for astroplanes like the ones the major spacelines used and for cargo shuttles to orbiting capital vessels and luxliners. He guessed Gryphon had a WDF runabout, or maybe just a heavy warpshuttle. He was wrong. "Is that what I think it is?" R-Type asked, pointing through the windshield at the vessel that waited for them. It crouched on three heavy, wheel-less landing legs, a flattened discus with two mandible-like protrudances at the front, a cockpit angled off the left side, heavy gun turrets top and bottom, and a large sensor-suite dish antenna jutting out of the port forequarter. "That depends on what you think it is," Gryphon replied with a smirk. "It's a Corellian YT-1300-series light-stock starfreighter. What the old-timers called the Falcon class." "That's what I thought..." R-Type looked over the grey and nondescript antique, noting the swatches of grease, burn scars, and -- was that rust? -- adorning its drab hull, and said, "You came in that thing?! You're braver than I thought." "Nice," Gryphon replied without breaking mental stride. "Maybe you'd like it back in your office, your suitness." R-Type tried hard not to break as he approached the freighter. About then he noticed the large Roman-style lettering on the port mandible: DAGGERDISC. "Daggerdisc. Nice name," commented R-Type as he maneuvered his car into alignment with the cargo bay's loading arms. The car was drawn into the bay, and R-Type shut the engine off, quietly snickering. "Aki, run diagnostics on all systems including yourself. I'm sure Vision wasn't lying, but I'd just as soon check everything over anyway. No offense," he added to Gryphon. Gryphon shrugged. "It's what I would do." Then he turned to the small screen. "Again, I'm... I'm sorry that had to happen. I'll talk to her about it." Aki nodded silently. She was concealing the fact that she was terrified as best she could. "Shutting down for diagnostics now," she announced. And then the car went silent. Gryphon and R-Type climbed out of the car, and Gryphon went to a small control panel and punched some keys. The air flickered as a forcefield secured the car, and then the hatch closed and sealed with a hiss. "C'mon, this way," Gryphon said, and R-Type followed him into the body of the ship. Gryphon led the way down a corridor,around part of the ship's curvature, past the main ramp and up a tangent through a narrow door. R-Type was surprised to see that there was someone else waiting in the cockpit, in the copilot's seat. The person's back was to the door, but even before she turned around to face the opening door, R- Type had recognized the shoulders and the flaming red hair. Hearing the door, Kei turned her seat around, putting her sneakered feet up on the seat of the chair behind her (R-Type thought it had originally been intended for the astrogator). She was dressed comfortably, in a battered old Salusian Military Institute sweatshirt and a pair of well-worn jeans, and showed very few, if any, signs that she had recently given birth to the child she held, wrapped in a blanket, in her arms. "You must be Dr. Mann," she said, smiling. She looked at Gryphon. "Talked him into it, eh?" "No, it was me," Vision said. Gryphon had slotted the PDA into a slot near the pilot's chair, and she'd appeared on one of the monitors. "He wants to know what makes me go." "Now, Vision, that's rude," Gryphon said, shaking a finger at the monitor, about as serious as your average circus clown. Vision checked a contact lens and stuck her tongue out at him. Kei snickered. R-Type, unsure what to do or say, stood. "Fine, have it your way," said Gryphon to Vision, parking himself in the pilot's chair. "Grab a seat, R-Type; I want to get off this planet as soon as possible." "Got something against Earth?" asked Larry as he sat down in the chair behind Gryphon's. "Oh, no, it's lovely ... if you don't mind the isolationist politics, the red tape, and the greenfreaks who come up to you in the spaceport and tell you it's your Duty to destroy your starship because its, and I quote, 'antiquated systems are polluting our mother world'. I really didn't have the heart to tell the jerk that Daggerdisc's systemry is more advanced than most of the Federation Starfleet's, let alone the clunkers the spacelines use. But I digress into bitterness and tirade." He grinned and started punching buttons. "Besides, the air here is too bloody clean. I'm used to shipboard air, that lovely plastic air." Kei sniffed. "I don't smell plastic." "It's a figure of speech." "You and your figures of speech. It's like listening to a Tamaran." Gryphon swiveled in his chair and pointed a fingertip under her nose, saying, "You, young lady, were the one who decided to hitch this ride. I didn't _make_ you come along." She bit his fingertip and replied, "Wasn't the whole -trip- my idea?" Then, shaking her head, she turned and strapped the child into a security seat which was attached to the astrogator's chair. "Your father," she informed the child smilingly, "is a git." Gryphon made a great show of shaking out his wounded hand before returning to powering up the ship. "You're impossible. Going to poison that kid's mind against me, I swear." "Um... " said R-Type. "Oh, I'm sorry. Where -are- my manners today? Dr. Mann, this is Kei, and our daughter, Kaitlyn." "Oh. Uh, hi." Kei smiled; Kate didn't look terribly impressed, but then, when you were three days old, you probably didn't either. "I hadn't heard." "No one has, yet," Kei replied. "What, was she born on your way here?" asked R-Type, not expecting it to be true. "Exactly. Hang on ..." Gryphon kicked in the gravity compensators, and the freighter lifted away from the tarmac with great alacrity. Gryphon spun it 170 degrees or so, canted the nose up and hit the main thrusters, and the ship was heading skyward. "Give me a course to Titan, will you, Kei?" Gryphon asked as he guided the old freighter out of the atmosphere. "It's up," Kei replied after a second of tinkering with the nav computer. "Thanks." Gryphon locked it in and then opened the impulse throttles all the way. "Next stop, Titan. And then, we can all look forward to a mind-numbingly dull week in beautiful hyperspace..." He grinned. "And then Dr. Mann here gets to see what OUR engineers could do." He was, of course, referring to the Dyson Sphere. R-Type had heard about it, of course, but had never actually seen it. "A week?" he asked. "Yeah ... this is a Corellian ship. It has a Corellian hyperdrive core. The builders upgraded it as far as they could, but it's still a hyperdrive." "Mm, oh well," R-Type shrugged. "Hope you all can put up with me for a week." "Well, it's actually kind of an advantage. It's hard to get a week vacation when you just want to do nothing, but if you can sched a business trip ... 'Sorry, my drive ... it'll take me a week.' 'Oh, okay ... well, see you next Friday then.' Bingo ... instant vacation." R-Type reflected some times over the past 400 years when he could have used such a thing. "You learn a few tricks when you're as busy as I am." Gryphon rolled his eyes. "Why, oh why, did I ever go into starship design?" Then he sighed. "Kei knows. Kei knows everything." "Don't you forget it, Liebchen." R-Type decided to disembark with Gryphon once they reached Port Anderson, the Titanese city closest to wherever it was he was going. Since two of them were going, he had no problems with getting his car back out of the hold and driving them, with directions from Gryphon, out into the countryside. As they went, conversation flowed, and R-Type learned much about this man the galaxy called "the greatest fighter pilot ever born". For one thing, he learned that, although proud of the accolades, Gryphon was also slightly embarrassed by his fame. He was trying to walk the fine line between appreciative and arrogant, and doing, he thought, a half-decent job. All in all, Larry thought, this legendary man seemed eminently ... human. He wasn't an Earthman as much as Larry was, that was for certain, but he was very real, very _there_. He hadn't quite expected that. And when they arrived at their destination, he was like a kid on Christmas. "This is _great_!" he declared, getting out of the car and looking up. "This is perfect!!" "What is it?" R-Type asked, standing up as well. He was looking up at a mountain, a great bare crag of stone that rose up out of the forest they had driven into. R-Type could smell and hear the ocean not far away, and realized the mountain must jut right out into the water, like the white cliffs of Dover. "It's going to be my vacation home," Gryphon said. "I'm gonna plane the top off flat--" He pointed, making a knife motion with one flattened hand, "--and build a mighty fortress up there, a great Welsh castle like the one in Macaulay's book. Down here will be kept the way it is, wild and natural." R-Type nodded. "It'll be beautiful." "I plan to have Christmas gatherings here, when it's finished. Get all the folks together in the Great Hall and put away some serious food, then hang around under the big tree and give each other stuff." He smiled. "I should call it the Yuletide, I suppose, but New England has left its mark on my dialect. I ought to find out what the Irish Celts called it before the missionaries showed up. You know, it's amazing, but the Salusians have a winter festival too. So do the Kilrathi, and the Corellians." "No kidding." "Yep. Well, enough of this ... this place is perfect. Let's get back to Port Anderson so I can buy it before someone else snaps it up." An hour and a half, a good meal in a Port Anderson restaurant, and some astrogation later, they were in hyperspace, heading back for UPNS. SOMEWHERE IN HYPERSPACE NIGHT CYCLE Gryphon walked into the Forward Cargo Hold Node and found Aki, dressed like a mechanic, examining under the "hood" of R-Type's car's icon. (The virtual representation of the car was identical to its realspace counterpart.) It looked as though she was well into the testing stage of the diagnostics, for some 'engine parts' could be seen scattered around the front of the vehicle. He watched her a moment longer before tapping on the door frame with his knuckles. Aki looked up from her work. "Wha? Oh... hello, Admiral Hutchins." "Please," Gryphon said as he walked in. "My name is Gryphon." He looked a bit tired, and more than a bit subdued. "Gryphon..." she repeated. "Can I... help you with something?" "Actually, I thought there might be something I could do for you." Hooph, that was clumsy. Of course, given his current tone of voice, it seemed to him like less of a come-on. Aki was puzzled. "What do you mean?" "Uhm ... I thought you might feel a bit better about what happened if someone explained _why_ it happened ... and since I'm the only one who can do it, well ... " He paused. "I can just go, if you like." "No no, please," she seemed to speed up. "Please, I need to know. I've never felt anything so... *powerful*..." She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. Gryphon sighed. "Well..." He looked around, then said in a neutral tone, "Bed, geometry 500 by 350 by 135, position 300 by 120, template six." A largish bed appeared in the corner of the "cargo hold", and he hopped up on it and patted the edge. "Sit down ... I do my best explaining when I'm comfortable." Aki hesitated. This was very different. She wished R-Type were here. "Don't be afraid of me, Aki," said Gryphon gently. "I'm not going to do anything to you." "I'm sorry," Aki said in a subdued tone. She made her way over to the bed and sat down gingerly on the corner. "It's just..." "Just a little weird?" "Well... yes." Gryphon shrugged. "Beds are useful for far more than just sleeping and bonking, Aki, so don't worry about the props. Get comfortable and I'll do my best to explain ... it's the least I can do for not realizing there could be a problem in time." Aki was seen to blush, but her clothing subroutine shifted as she suspended the diagnostics. Now she was wearing a loose-fitting white blouse and brown slacks. Gryphon looked up at the ceiling and began his narrative the same way he had begun it to R-Type. "Have you ever heard of CLULESS?" "Only what R-Type's history books have said about it," Aki answered. Gryphon nodded and basically repeated his tale as he'd told it to R-Type, ending on the same note: "And there she was." R-Type had, at least, managed a word or two afterwards. Aki seemed to be unable to say anything, and Gryphon could tell by the look in her eyes that she was a little frightened, and unsure. "I know, it seems a bit unreal ... but you have to understand what CLULESS _is_. No mortal being created it ... it's a product of one of the Q, the all-powerful. Everything it touches has the touch of godhead in it, I guess..." "Then that's what I felt..." Aki managed finally to speak. "That power... she could have killed me..." Aki wasn't the cybercombat type. Jilehr was more suited to those things. "Power, power, power..." Gryphon said with an exasperated look on his face. "Is that all that makes a person who they are? I command a ship with enough firepower to sterilize a planet, Aki. Does that make me evil? Vision's problem is that she isn't AWARE of her power. Isn't aware of it and doesn't have as much self- control as one could wish for ... it doesn't make her any less quitayne!" Aki shied away from him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to offend you." Gryphon also looked apologetic. "And I didn't mean to get upset... I'm exhausted. I should have rested before I tried this, but I couldn't leave you hanging... "Look, what I'm trying to say is, Vision can't help being what she is. She just ... _is_. I think it's always bothered her a little bit that she's visually a replica of another woman I once loved, a realspace woman ... I think she's afraid that she means something less to me than she would if she were a realspace woman too. When Jilehr suggested that that might be the case, well ... it terrified her, frankly, the idea that Jilehr might be _right_. The fact that I didn't jump in and start raising holy hell about it didn't help ... I had no idea it worried her so much. So she lashed out... and you got caught in the middle. I just talked to her, you know. She feels terrible. She forgot that she'd have to hurt you to hurt the one who'd cut her so deeply ... when I left her she was busily being totally miserable about it. "She's just a person, like the rest of us. She's quitayne, she's flawed, she makes mistakes. She made one today, and she feels awful about it. Eventually she might even swallow enough of that damn pride of hers to apologize for it. She likes you, Aki." Aki was silent for a moment longer, parsing an internal decision. She swallowed. "I... I suppose I should talk to her, then." "I think she may screw up enough courage to come and see you when she wakes up..." "Wakes up? She shut down?" "No ... she went to sleep. She's had a rotten day... made a new friend, then tried to knock her teeth in... all that emotional trauma... I had to calm her down for the last couple of hours, and then she went to sleep. She's extremely anthropomorphic." "Mm..." Aki said after another thoughtful pause. The idea of a "sleeping" ACI was rather new to her still. "Well then... could I be informed when she... wakes up?" "Sure ... I'll let you know." Gryphon yawned. "You ought to try it ... it's rewarding." Aki canted her head to one side, not really comprehending, then shrugged it off and rezzed back into her work clothes, resuming the diagnostics on the car. Gryphon shrugged and got up, letting the bed vanish. "Suit yourself, but I think you're missing out." He was on his way towards the door when Aki called out: "Oh, and Gryphon?" He paused at the door. "Yes?" "Thank you... for telling me... for telling *us*..." "You're welcome." He looked momentarily troubled. "I only hope your other side doesn't use what she's learned as a lever at some point. Vision will never attack you again, now that she knows how closely you're linked ... and I don't want to have to play junior cyberpsychologist with the kind of frustration it would cause..." [Just what I need,] he thought. [Vision in a fugue rage state. Yugh.] "I don't think she will..." Aki considered. "She knows what hit her. I don't think she'll cross that kind of power again. I don't see her taking that risk." Gryphon looked at the deck for a moment, then said, "Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose. Good night, Aki." And he left. THE NEXT MORNING Gryphon wandered down the corridor in the general direction of the wardroom, a mug of tea in his hand and bags under his eyes. He'd gotten *something* over the past few hours, but it wasn't sleep. His mind was on various things, Vision chief among them. She'd probably be waking up before too long, and he needed to be there to greet her. That and he definitely needed to tell Larry about the conversation he had with Aki, if he could find him. You'd think it wouldn't be hard on a ship of Daggerdisc's size to find somebody, but... Fortunately the problem was gracious enough to solve itself. As Gryphon plodded into the wardroom he was greeted by the sight of R-Type with his feet on the holochess table, sketching Kei, who was leaning against an unidentifiable control panel. "Good ning," he croaked. The two turned and R-Type started to say good morning when he noticed Gryphon's appearance: he looked rather out of sorts, in a gaudily patched bathrobe that made him look a lot like a Funkotroni monk, and the Babs Bunny slippers could not be missed. His hair was nothing short of a nuclear disaster area. "Eesh," R-Type said. "You look like... *something* warmed over. What happened to you?" "Nothing, really. I was up all night, and I didn't sleep very well the night before, or the night before, or... it's catching up with me, is all. I spent all night in cyberspace, talking down high bombs... " "High bom-- oh..." R-Type understood immediately. "Problems in cyberspace?" asked Kei. "Oh ... um ... Vision kind of mugged Larry's cybernetic intelligence yesterday, and I spent most of the night picking up the pieces." "What?!" Gryphon turned to R-Type. "You want to try and explain it, or shall I?" "I'll take a stab at it." "Ok." Gryphon sat down at the chess table and nursed his tea as R-Type started explaining the situation to Kei. "My CI has two personalities, Aki and Jilehr." Kei nodded. "Well, Jilehr sort of... called Vision a sex toy. She was having a bad day, what with suddenly having to move out of my home PC and into my car's 'frame. Next thing I knew, Vision had broken into my car's computer and tried to kill her. When she hit Jilehr she also hit Aki's object files. Scared her shitless." "Ouch," Kei said. "She tried to kill her?" "Um, just a second..." Gryphon raised a hand, and they both turned to look at him. "She wasn't trying to *kill* Jilehr, just crash her, make her shut up. When you jumped on kids who taunted you in grade school, did you want to kill them? Give her a little credit, if you could, please." His piece apparently said, he took another sip of tea. "Mm..." R-Type parsed this for a minute. "Yeah, I guess so. Still, when a PDA suddenly takes your carphone off the hook and hacks into your computer, it sorta catches you unprepared. And when I see that kind of power I can only assume Death is on her way. And if Vision *had* crashed her in the car, it *could* have killed her. On one level I agree that Jilehr deserved what she got. I guess she figured a PDA couldn't break into a car. Neither did I, to tell you the truth; to be perfectly honest with you, what Vision did scared the everliving shit out of me." Gryphon nodded, took another sip of tea. "Jilehr hit her pretty hard too," he said. "Just not as spectacularly. I spent three hours picking up the pieces. How'd you like to have your worst fear thrown in your face by a total stranger?" "Indeed," R-Type nodded. He'd noted that Gryphon's tone was not accusational, but conversational. No need for fighting over this subject. "I haven't had a chance to check on Aki yet. I should do that soon." "I talked to her last night," Gryphon said. "How is she?" "A little frightened. Who wouldn't be, after seeing... well, let's be honest... an angry godling?" He shrugged. "I explained to her about Vision's beginnings and why what Jilehr said hurt her so much that she was driven to attack... I tried to explain that Vision's just as quitayne as the rest of us..." "'Quitayne'?" "It's a Salusian word, basically means the same thing to them that it means to us when we say we're 'only human'. It's becoming more popular in Standard, since it's not race-specific like the concept of 'humanity' is." R-Type nodded his understanding. "Anyway, I tried to explain that. I don't know how well I did, but if you asked I'd say 'probably not great'." He paused. "She wants to talk to Vision." "Really? Well, that's probably a good sign. Aki's good at being helpful... she helped me out of some rough times... but *I* digress. Is Vision willing to talk to her? Hmm, wonder if I should be there...?" "I'm not sure it's a good idea for it to go down at all, but Vision wanted to talk to her, too, once I had her calmed down last night." He sighed. "I don't know, Larry. We can't sysop them their whole runtime. Remember what the 'A' in 'ACI' is supposed to stand for." "Hmm... guess I should leave it up to Aki, then." "Yeah, I think so," Kei spoke up. "Besides, you haven't finished with *me* yet!" "'I'm not finished with you yet, you yellow bastard!' 'What're you going to do, man, bleed on my feet?!'" Gryphon cried in a rather awful British accend made harder-edged by his lack of rest. R-Type and Kei snarfed. Then Gryphon got serious again: "Look, here's my two cents' worth. I've said my piece to both of them. If you've got something you want to say, then I think you should talk to them separately too. When they meet again, though ... I think it would just insult them if we were watching over their shoulders. Vision won't do anything to either of them, now that she knows how connected they are. She likes Aki. I only hope Jilehr doesn't use what Aki learned from me as a weapon... if she did, it would be very brutal of her." R-Type spread his hands apart. "I don't think she will, considering what she experienced. She may be impulsive, but she's not stupid. And I think you're right, we can't mother them: it should be just between them. Hopefully Aki's ready for Vision." Gryphon sighed and quoted: "'And I have seen a friend become a worshipper. Where does it end?'" He shook his head. "All right, then... I'll go back and jack in, so I can let Aki know when Vision's awake." "We'll be here if you need us," R-Type said as he advanced the lead in his pencil. Kei headed back to where she'd been standing, detouring past the chessboard to check on Kaitlyn, who was, unsurprisingly, asleep. Gryphon waved absently and shuffled back toward his quarters, muttering, "I want to sleeeeeeeeeeeepppp..." R-Type and Kei stifled snarfs. CYBERSPACE 30 MINUTES LATER It was like a repeat of the night before, as Gryphon leaned into the cargo hold and (virtually, of course) knocked on the wall. This time Aki was just leaning against the car, which was now in much better shape than it had looked last night. She was dressed in her white business dress, with a neatly ironed brown skirt, and looked quite nice. She appeared to be lost in thought, but turned as soon as Gryphon knocked. "Yes? Oh, hello Gryphon," Aki said. "Are you all right?" "Good morning, Aki," Gryphon replied. (His icon looked as awful as he did in realspace at that moment.) "I'm fine, just a little tired." "Is Vision...?" "Yes... she's standing right behind me, in fact, if now's a good time." "Um... I... don't see why not." "All right." Gryphon stood aside to let Vision pass him, took her shoulders in his hands, muttered something to her, and kissed her before departing. (Aki noted that she was wearing a bathrobe identical to the one Gryphon's icon was wearing.) And then they were alone, the only other icon in the node being R-Type's car, against which Aki leaned now. There was an uncomfortable silence. "Um..." Aki fidgeted. How to start this...? She looked off to one side. "Er..." Vision replied. "I, uh... I'm sorry... about what I did. It was... um... uh... rude." [No, no, that's the wrong adjective.] "Um... me... me too. I'm sorry my temper flared so badly." [Ack, not *my* temper... well, actually... this isn't starting too well...] Vision fidgeted for a few seconds, then made a small exasperated sound and made the bed appear in the corner, throwing herself on it on her back. "-Damn- it, I hate awkwardness!" She sat up. "Look, I'm sorry I beat up on your other personality. I didn't know you were linked that closely. I've never seen your protocol before. I lost my temper. She said some things that hit me where I live. All right?" [There. We'll try the blunt approach,] she said to herself. [Shit, I'm bad at this...] Aki was a little startled by the outburst, but she quickly recovered. She got up and walked over to the bed, sitting down at the corner, still a bit cautious. But she could tell Vision was uncomfortable, and she wanted to create as little friction as possible. Vision folded her legs under her, and reached out a hand to touch Aki's shoulder. Aki turned to face her, the look in her eyes somewhere between fear and admiration. "I... I'm not sure what to say..." she fumbled. "I mean... I'm STACIS version 2.2, one of the most advanced ACI protocols there is. But you... you're so much more powerful..." Vision nodded, more to herself. Aki _had_ moved away, almost imperceptibly, when she reached out. Her eyes stung. She turned away. "Just like everyone else. Just like all the others ... afraid of me." She threw herself down on the bed. "I can't help what I am!" "Wha... what do you mean, 'all the others'?" Aki asked. And she couldn't help noticing that Vision's eyes were glimmering. "The Wedge Defense Force and the civilian sectors of New Avalon have a lot of ACIs and high-time deckers ... and I don't have a goddamned friend in the whole spherespace. Eve, Ben, and ... a couple of others ... that's all. Most of the others won't even talk to me. Like I'm some kind of bomb that's going to kill them if they touch me. They're all afraid ... afraid of me, afraid of what I can do. Damn it, I didn't ask to be this way!" She grabbed a pillow and buried her face in it, muttering: "There are times when I wish I'd never goddamn incepted." "Well..." Aki hunted for the right words. "People are always afraid of what they don't understand. So R-Type's told me. I mean, take yesterday, for example, when you hacked into this car. You just went right in as though the system didn't exist. I don't think R-Type will admit it, but... but there's a 95% probability he was very scared by that. I mean, he watched his most powerful ACI get attacked by someone capable of destroying her. You could erase me with a thought if you wanted to. You're practically a deity." "I know," Vision said bitterly. "The ones who aren't afraid of me can't love me either, because they're too busy fucking worshipping me. I think that hollow blank fucking adoration look hurts even more than the fear. Oh, fuck it, why am I telling you this? You don't care, you either hate me or fear me, just like everybody else, and I don't blame you. I've tried to keep it quiet before, but I always do some damn stupid thing and it comes out in the end, and it always ends the same." She buried her face in the pillow, mostly so Aki couldn't see her crying. Aki just looked at her for a moment. She'd been parsing Gryphon's words from the night before very carefully, and now it was time to put that information to use. "Listen... Gryphon talked to me yesterday. On this same bed, as a matter of fact. He told me all about you, and what happened to--" Vision sat up. "He TOLD you?! Why that--!" She stopped when Aki placed a hand on her shoulder. She wasn't finished. "Listen... if he *hadn't*... I probably wouldn't understand it now. I won't pretend that I'm not scared anymore, but..." She paused. "You and I have something in common. We have lifeforce." "Huh?" "You have what's called a soul, don't you?" Vision nodded. "Most people don't know it, but I do too. It's nowhere near as advanced as your lifeforce, but I *do* have it. I have a Spengler index of 0.85." Vision was mildly surprised at this. She didn't know of any ACI protocols other than her own which actually generated physical life force. And R-Type had created her... this *was* interesting. "So... I don't know how significant that is, but... I think it does give us *something* in common. I mean, I have a lifeforce too. I know what it means to be... different. I *am* capable of understanding... I guess... I..." She paused, hunting for the right phrase. "R-Type's told me it's called 'getting to know one better', I think..." Vision cracked a small smile. "Where I come from, that has another definition ... but ... " She shifted to an overserious imitation of Gryphon. " ... but I digress." This made Aki giggle momentarily, but she soon sobered. Vision sighed. "I'm just... lonely. I mean, for some reason, I'm very anthropomorphic, you know? I have the same wants and desires as everybody else Outside. I want to eat and sleep, work and play, run and fuck and laugh just like everyone else. And I can't ... because of what I am." Aki looked down for a moment, her cheeks coloring a bit. Vision's whole approach to existence was something she still didn't quite comprehend, but her loneliness was something she *could* understand. "I guess the proper way to say this, then..." She paused, then looked into Vision's eyes. "I would like to be your friend." Vision blinked twice in rapid succession, a mannerism which, Aki would come to learn in later years, she had picked up from Gryphon. "You ... you would?" "I'd like to try. We may have gotten off on the wrong foot, but that doesn't mean it can't ever be put right again." Vision looked reflective. (No, no, that doesn't mean she turned all silver.) "I seem to remember someone saying that once before ... if I could only remember who it was." She trailed off. "I guess it doesn't matter. I, um ... I don't know what to say, really." Aki reached down and took Vision's hand in hers, smiling. "I guess this is what it feels like to open one's soul up to another," she observed. Vision looked down at their hands. "I, uh... I guess so." She drew Aki toward her and hugged her. "You know... R-Type is a fairly accomplished biocyberneticist. Perhaps if you wanted to find out what the Outside is like, he could help you with that... if he would be willing to be your friend, too. And I think he would, if you got to know each other." "H'm... I hadn't thought of it that way before. It might be... interesting ... " She tried to imagine what it would be like to see and hold the _real_ Gryphon, the one she could see through remote optics but never touch. She knew that her realities were the most realistic possible, and that there was really no difference... but... the idea was appealing. [How textbook,] she said to herself, [Pinocchia wants to be a real girl...] She shook her head to clear it. "I think I'll burn one bridge at a time." Aki smiled. "Of course, no need to rush anything. Let's all be friends. I'm sure R-Type would like to, too." "Yeah... let's," Vision replied. Then, impulsively, she gave the other CI a quick kiss and sprung from the bed, demonstrating her amazing ability to rapidly rebound from difficulties in her life. "Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot better." Aki blushed a little. "Um... me too. Oh, and Vision?" "Yeah?" "I'll see to it that Jilehr, um... 'knows her place', as it were. She won't bother you again, not if I can help it." "Uh... thanks, Aki. Thanks. Listen, I'll, uh, I'll see you around, ok?" [Gah, I'm as bad at ending conversations as I am at starting them...] "All right. Say hello to R-Type and Gryphon if you see them before I do." She smiled. "Okay... bye..." Vision left the node and went back to the one corresponding to the cockpit, pondering. Aki stood, and the bed de-rezzed behind her. She walked over to the car and leaned against the front bumper, deep in thought. [She's not so bad once you get to know her,] she thought with a smile. Somewhere inside her head, a small voice was going [God, I hate them. "Let's be friends." Oooh, how cute. *retch*...] The rest of the journey passed fairly uneventfully. After a good bit of consideration and resolve-building, Vision finally approached R-Type and asked if they could talk about what went on. As it turned out, he was quite forgiving of the whole mess: having Vision's origins explained to him by Gryphon, not to mention getting a report from Aki about what had gone on, had given him a much better understanding. And knowing all of that, he'd told her that he would like to be friends as well, and help her with the problems she was facing in whatever way he could. How he was going to help her he didn't know, but Vision didn't really care; just having two new friends in the Spherespace would be more than enough. R-Type had also bawled Jilehr out for what she'd done and secured her promise to ramp down the attitude when around Vision. He fully expected her to try sneaking in a snide comment once in a while, though; it was her inherent nature, after all, and he warned Vision accordingly. Vision figured, having a better understanding of the situation herself, she could deal with that. In a few days, events' normal progression (read: becoming increasingly bored and mildly claustrophobic after being cooped up in that tiny ship for a whole week) found the ersatz crew of Daggerdisc congregated in the cockpit for hyperspace dropout. Larry stood between the pilot and copilot seats (occupied by Gryphon and Kei, respectively), his hands steadying him on the seats' headrests, and watched the blue tumbrels of hyperspace for a few moments longer as Gryphon fiddled with the controls. "Hyperspace dropout in five," he announced. "Four. Three. Two. Dropout... now." With that, he reached up and pushed the hyperdrive throttles forward to "disengage"; the blueness of hyperspace washed white, splintered into lines, and dropped back to stars. All, that is, except for the great silver disk which it took Larry a few moments to realize was the Zeta Cygni Dyson Sphere. It didn't particularly impress him, at first, even though intellectually he knew how big it was; he simply stood and regarded it, impassive on the surface. Gryphon smiled, glancing at Kei, who returned his private grin; they both knew what was to come. Then Kei reached up and activated the comm unit. "Zeta Cygni Control, this is Zulu Charlie November Alpha one one three eight, on approach to New Avalon Main Gate. Repeat, ZCNA-1138 on approach to New Av Interstel. Over." "Roger, Eleven-thirty-eight," the controller's voice crackled back. "You're clear on Interstel; bring her into the usual pad. Welcome home, you two. Admiral, Fleet Admiral MegaZone wants to, quote, bitch you out, unquote, on your arrival." Gryphon chuckled. "I'm not at all surprised, Control. 1138 out." "What's the Fleet Admiral's problem?" asked R-Type. "Oh, he's probably annoyed with us for sneaking out of the base hospital and traipsing off across the galaxy with me so close to term," Kei replied airily. "Don't worry about it; he gets his briefs in a twist sometimes over nothing." "It's nothing to do with me, then?" "I don't think he even knows you're coming." "Well," Gryphon qualified, "he might if he paid attention to the forms crossing his desk." "Which means he doesn't." "Right." Larry snickered. Then he realized that Daggerdisc was screaming low over the Dyson sphere's hull, and before he could even quite parse that, the ship had nosed down and plunged through an open gate the size of a small moon's diameter and into the sphere itself. The visual impact of the sheer enormity of the place, so big it looked far more interesting than infinity (ref. Adams, Douglas: _The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, specifically his description of Magrathea), had such an effect on Larry that it caused him to speak a statement he had not made since his childhood: "My God!" "Something like that," Gryphon replied with a cryptic grin. New Avalon Interstellar Starport looked like any other starport, really; it was shiny and new, and the terminal smelled like fresh carpet glue, but other than that it was quite ordinary, if large. Larry didn't care; he was still looking avidly around, taking in the sights and sounds of it all, suffering his usual new-place shock. So he didn't notice the tall, dark man in black approaching until he was already yelling at Gryphon: "You jerk! How could you go and do something so damn dangerous! You could've -- " Gryphon was in the process of formulating an interruption (probably "Whoa, whoa, whoa, ease up on your sphincter, Tex!"), but he didn't get the chance, since Kei had already interposed herself and said, "Off his back, Zoner -- it was my idea." Zoner skidded to a verbal halt and blinked. Kei took this opportunity to completely distract him by holding Kaitlyn up and saying, "And besides, Kaitlyn and I are both fine, so what's the problem?" MegaZone, the Wedge Defense Force Supreme Commander, was a battle-hardened warrior. He had, in the course of his long, colorful, and often less than strictly legal career, seen almost all manner of horror and atrocity. During the Exile he had made a living as what amounted to a professional killer. He would not, if asked, describe himself as a nice person. He melted completely in the face of infancy and became Awkward Uncle Zoner in less than four-tenths of a second. [Kei Morgan maternal and MegaZone blithering,] Larry Mann remarked to himself. [If I die now I can say I've seen it all.] Recovering, Zoner shot Gryphon a look that said, "We'll discuss this later," and then turned to R-Type, who instantly felt uncomfortable. Zoner's dark eyes sized Larry up in a few moments, scanning him up and down, the expression behind them inscrutable, and there was a long pause. "So," Zoner said, his expression still neutral and featureless. "You must be R-Type." R-Type kept himself from sounding overly nervous as he replied, "That's me." Zoner's face did not change as he continued, "You're the Other Man." R-Type swallowed. Zoner grinned and stuck out his hand. "Welcome to Zeta Cygni." R-Type nearly fainted. The legal part of getting moved in was a lot quicker than what he had expected. A lot of the paperwork had been graciously taken care of in advance by Vision, but there were still a few forms which needed to be signed down at Immigration, and of course he had to go through the business of reading lease agreements and signing contracts, picking up keycards and transmitters, and all the other lunacy associated with getting moved into the average apartment complex. That all went off without a hitch, which was good, because R-Type didn't want any financial or other concerns -- this decidedly abrupt move across the galaxy was enough of a shock as it was -- occupying his mind while he went through the rather arduous task of getting himself moved in the rest of the way. He'd tried to scale down his outfit over the years, but no matter what he did he still ended up with a lot of shit (mainly because a lot of it was vintage 20th Century stuff which was irreplaceable and couldn't be electronically archived). Oh well. He loosened his tie a bit as he made his way down the top floor walkway which led to the apartment. With any luck, one of the boxes near the top of the pile would contain some clothes more suited to moving furniture and unpacking boxes and all that stuff. Getting all the stuff unpacked and arranged would probably take the rest of the day and maybe some of tomorrow too, but that was okay. He didn't need to be anywhere else until Monday anyway. He swiped the keycard through the door's access panel, beginning to consider how to arrange the furniture in this new place. Then the door pinged and slid open, and he stepped through. Actually, he stepped halfway through and then stopped in the middle of the doorway, and then just sort of stood there staring, unspeaking. Because everything had already been unpacked, reassembled, and arranged. And very well, to boot. R-Type finally stepped through the door when it registered its annoyance at his being where he was, allowing it to close at last. He stepped into the living room, looking around him in semi-stunned silence. Then he proceeded to look through the kitchen, the bathroom and bedroom, and the second bedroom which had been set up as a workroom (he could tell because the computers and bookcases were in there). Everything was there, assembled or shelved or whatever was appropriate, and ready for use. The layout was different from what he'd had at Amherst, of course; that one had been a one-bed-one-bath. This one had more space, and it also had an entire multiterm setup built into one of the living room walls. But differences aside, the more he looked at it, and the more he thought about it... the more he realized this was *exactly* the kind of layout he would have decided upon after having seen the place and considered all the options. It was, to say the least, vaguely surreal. Somebody had just saved him a lot of time and effort, so it would seem. Somebody also knew him inside and out, it would also seem, which was a bit disconcerting. Then again, he supposed he shouldn't be too surprised, considering how fast FedEx had descended on Amherst. He wouldn't be at all surprised if Eve had had something to do with it. She had a knack for knowing everything, after all. And well, if somebody was going to know every single thing about him, he'd much rather it be Eve than anyone else. [Hmph,] he remarked to himself. [Guess I *can* deal with her knowing everything about me after all.] Getting settled was very easy after that initial shock was past. After he'd gotten out of his admittedly stale suit (sorry, but a week is a *long* time to wear the exact same set of clothes) and into some clothes far better suited to relaxing (i.e. a t-shirt and some jeans), R-Type spent a fair amount of time going through every shelf and drawer and taking an impromptu inventory of everything. Partly so he could learn where everything was really located in this apartment, and partly to satisfy himself that everything was indeed there. Unlike those of the UFPS, standard FedX shipments did not make a habit of disappearing forever into the nebulous void which was the mail system. In other words, everything was present and accounted for, and in a proper place. It was still a little amazing to him how everything did indeed seem so proper, so "in place". But that was a good thing; it was one less thing for him to deal with, and so he could just sit on the couch and relax for the rest of the day-- Then the phone rang. Maybe not. Who had his number? he wondered. Oh well, might as well see who it is. He hoisted himself back to a standing position, homed in on the closest vidphone -- located on the wall right next to the multiterm -- and picked it up. "Hello?" An image of a man appeared, looking fairly unassuming and very very calm in manner. "Good afternoon, R-Type," the man said in a voice which was soft yet somehow very commanding at the same time. R-Type was standing very straight in an instant, all his corporate reflexes bringing him to an attentive stance immediately. Dear Eris, the *Master*!! "G-- good afternoon, m'lord!" Kwei-Chang Caine shook his head slowly. "There is no need for such... formalities now, R-Type. I would carry no title other than 'Master'. It is all I am... deserving of, as a Shaolin." The relaxing tone of the man's voice made R-Type want to loosen up, but his body was not ready to back down just yet, trained as it was by several centuries under servitude to Largo. So he simply replied "As... as you wish... Master." Caine smiled a small smile. Old habits died hard, he knew, and it would take time for R-Type to break free of them. But certainly he would get there, given time. In the meanwhile: "I trust Gryphon has... told you of the need for talents here." "Yes, m'l-- er, Master. I've been told there are several positions opening for which I would be qualified." "Have you come to any... decision as yet?" "No sir," R-Type replied. "There are so many options, and so many of them inviting, that I'm not certain what to select." "Indeed," Caine said. "I would tell you, now, that you are... free to leave the company if you... truly wish to do so now. Do you wish to do this?" "No..." R-Type said after a moment of very careful consideration. "For all the difficult times I went through, there are good times to compensate. ... I do enjoy being a part of this company, in final analysis. ... I would like to stay with GENOM." Caine nodded slowly. "I am glad to hear that. You are a... very talented individual, R-Type. I have studied your record of service, and I have been... considering where your abilities might be... put to their best use, if you would hear my suggestion." "Of course, Master. Wherever you wish to place me." "This should be your decision as much as mine," Caine reminded him, then went on. "Having considered your history, your record of service over the centuries, and the... sum of your accomplishments as an officer of the company... it is my opinion that you would be... best suited to the duties of..." [Here it comes...] R-Type thought, bracing himself. "...an Executive Vice President... of the company." "Eh?" R-Type managed to remark. Those words had nailed him straight between the eyes, and he wasn't quite certain he'd actually heard them. "And further," Caine continued, amused at R-Type's stunned reaction. "You are ideally suited to the position of... Chief Executive Officer of our operations... in New Avalon and the Enigma Sector." R-Type opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out besides some exclamation resembling "Ah?" Then he snapped out of his shock and quickly closed his slack jaw. "Yes, R-Type," Caine answered the unasked question. "I *am* serious. The way I see it, there is no better way to... put your myriad talents to their best use, than to... have you in a position where such multi-faceted knowledge is... most useful. My staff and I considered many options for you, and this seemed the most... reasonable." "I... I'm..." R-Type fumbled. "I'm not sure what to say..." "You need not say anything now. I would like to meet with you, later today, so that we might... discuss this matter in greater detail." "Of-- of course! When?" "An ideal time would be 1300 hours today, if that would be convenient for you." "Certainly," he answered. "Any... anytime is fine." "Good," Caine smiled. "I will see you at 1300 hours, then... at our temporary office... in Osbourne Plaza. Do you know the location?" "Y-yes, I do. It was pointed out to me earlier today." "Good. Then I will see you at 1300 hours." "I'll be there, Master. And... and thank you." "You are welcome. Goodbye, R-Type," he concluded, and then the connection was cut. R-Type hung up the vidphone, and then just sort of sank into the closest chair and let out a long wheeze. After a few minutes he finally made a remark: "Geebah." "This is certainly interesting," Aki remarked from the multiterm monitor. "Congratulations on your promotion." "Gheh," R-Type emitted another wheeze. He certainly hadn't known what to expect, and this 'promotion' certainly was *not* among the speculations he'd had. "I seem to have my work cut out for me," he deadpanned after a moment. "Sure looks that way," Jilehr responded. "Welcome to the beautiful people, RT." "Yeah..." Larry said, still trying to comprehend the full magnitude of what he'd just been presented with. An Executive VP, *and* CEO of New Avalon/Enigma Sector Operations??? That meant that not only was GENOM New Avalon -- rumored to be high in the running for the new center of the whole GENOM organization with the loss of Halstead Station -- going to be under his complete control, but he had authority over all the CEOs of every single GENOM office in the Enigma Sector, and could override their orders if necessary. That was a *lot* of power. And a lot of responsibility to go with it, seeing as how he was essentially answerable only to the Master himself. AND, if what he was hearing in the grapevine were true, the New Avalon spot could put him one jump away from the Big Chair itself. Sheesh. An entire GENOM facility at his fingertips, and several dozen more under his authority? And publicly, no less? The idea was hard for him to grasp. He was much more used to being a background figure. Not only was this the foreground, it was a center seat: the command decisions were going to be his to make. Was he ready for *this* kind of position? Major responsibility, public figure and all that...? There was a very long period of consideration. ...... [Well......] he thought at length. [Never know 'til you try. ... Who knows? It might actually be fun.] A slight grin grew on his face. He certainly wasn't going to complain. He glanced at his watch and noted then that it was now 12:15; he had about 45 minutes left to prepare for, and get to, his meeting with Master Caine. Plenty of time to get where he needed to be, certainly, but a little less time than he felt comfortable with. He got to his feet and moved into the bedroom, locating a clean suit in a matter of minutes and laying it out on the bed. Definitely a non-stop day, this one. He'd made it as far as getting into the shirt and pants when the phone rang again. "Gad," he remarked. "*Now* what?" He headed over to the bedroom phone and picked it up, hoping that whoever it was would be brief. The monitor flared to life once again. "Hello--" he started to say, and then he saw who it was, and all thoughts of just about everything came to a halt. "Hi Larry!" Yuri said. She looked considerably better than she had when last he'd seen her face, and obviously much happier (if the cheerful tone in her voice was any indication). "How are you?" "I'm-- I'm fine!" His voice ran away from him for a moment and he had to relocate it. "How... how are *you*? My gosh..." "Oh, I'm doing great," she answered. It was amazing, to Larry, how different she seemed from the last time they'd met. And it was a good change; she seemed to be practically glowing with happiness now. "Enjoying New Avalon so far?" "It's surreal, that's for sure," he answered. "The whole day -- heck, the last *week* -- has been surreal and it hasn't stopped yet. One minute I'm in Irvine and the next I'm in hyperspace feeling vaguely surreal. Then my entire apartment is already arranged to perfection when I get here, which is mildly surreal. Then Master Caine calls and asks me to come down to the office, which I'm trying to get ready for right now, for what I can only call a Dream Job. *Very* surreal. And now pretty girls are calling me on the phone. What's next, autograph sessions?" "How'd you know we were setting a table up?" Yuri asked, and then tried unsuccessfully to stifle a major giggling fit as R-Type groaned and looked thoroughly pained. Then he just moaned "make it stop, joel..." in a very small voice, and she broke completely. The laughter became contagious and it wasn't long before they were both trying to get themselves under control. Again, Larry couldn't miss how wonderful it was to see that smile on her face. "So," Yuri finally said when they'd managed to calm themselves down at last. "How have you *been*? Goddess, you look *great*! So much has happened these past few years! There's so many things I want to tell you about! It's so good to *see* you again!" "Aye to *that*," Larry replied, reeling just a bit from the verbal barrage she'd just thrown at him. My, but she was enthusiastic right now. "I've got a list of crazy stories that'll take a year and half to tell..." he glanced at his watch. "But unfortunately, time is short right now. I got about a half an hour to get down to the office, and I wanna get moving." He looked worried then; what he'd just said felt thoroughly rude to him all of a sudden. "Er, I don't mean to cut you off or anything--" "No no! I understand," Yuri answered quickly. "Don't want to miss such an important meeting, after all. Besides..." she hesitated for a moment, and... was she blushing...? "I'd... I'd rather talk to you in person anyway... Um... are you gonna be free this evening?" "Um, yeah, after this meeting I'm downtime until next Monday," he answered. "Uh, did you have something specific in mind?" "Well..." she said. "I thought maybe we could go out for dinner. Someplace real high-class and formal, maybe? Um... I bought this new dress, and I wanna try it out and everything." R-Type shrugged. "Um, sure, if that's what you want. Um... any particular place you want to go? I'm not too familiar with the restaurant scene around here yet." "Anywhere," Yuri answered. "It doesn't matter. Just so long as I can talk to you. It's so good to see your face again!" "Gee, I didn't know my face was such a commodity. Maybe I should patent it," he remarked, causing Yuri to snarf. "All righty, I guess I can handle that. I'll have Aki pin down some restaurants, then. Any particular time tonight? Six, six-thirty?" "Six would be great." She smiled once again. "Gods, but it's so good to see you again!" R-Type looked sheepish and on the verge of coloring a little himself. Sheesh, how many times had she said that now? Three, wasn't it? "Er, yeah, you too." He looked at his watch again and sighed. "Um, listen, I gotta get moving. Um... guess I'll see you later." "Okay!" Yuri smiled. "See you, and good luck!" "Heh, yeah," he answered. "I'll need it. See you!" "Bye!" she said, and cut her connection. R-Type regarded the dark screen for several very long moments, then replaced the handset on its cradle, leaned against the nearest wall, and emitted a long, slow exhale. "Very... very... surreal... day." "What a guy," Jilehr remarked from the vidphone's monitor. "Way to go, RT, you big stud." "Oh give me a break," R-Type rolled his eyes and looked exasperated. "We're just going to *dinner*, for crying out loud." "Mm-hmm, yeah, right," Jilehr smirked, and then was replaced by Aki. "I took the liberty of adding the Daniels number to the phone directory." "Thanks, Aki," R-Type answered. "Do me a favor: I want you to shop around and get me a list of the best restaurants in the city. Clientele should be upper or upper-middle income, dress code semiformal or higher. Money's not a concern this time. If Yuri wants high-class, she gets only the best. Give me the results after the meeting." "Would you like me to contact Miss Daniels and see if she has any preferences once I have the list?" "Yeah, do that. That'd be great." It was at this moment, interestingly enough, that his stomach chose to register a complaint about a distinct lack of digestable resources, and he sighed in annoyance. There was very little time available for eating right now. He had a choice of trying to grab some fast food or something before the meeting, or waiting until afterwards and then snagging the food. His stomach started bitching again, louder this time. Considering that fact, he figured the former option was the much better course of action. Having his stomach begin a conversation with him during a conference with the Master would be a most undesirable happening. "What's the closest food court to the office building?" he asked as he quickly shrugged into his suitjacket and did a quick inventory of the contents of his briefcase. "There's one in the same plaza, across the walkway in front of the office building," Aki answered. "They have a Carl's Jr. there which has a high quality ranking according to the latest statistics, and your usual order has a 90% probability of being completed in less than two minutes." "Great," R-Type answered, double-checking his appearance in the closest mirror and heading for the front door. "Little less time than I'd like, but oh well. Get the car warmed up; I'll be garage-side in two minutes." "I'm already there," Aki answered. A FEW MINUTES LATER OSBOURNE PLAZA FOOD COURT [This place is indeed beautiful,] Iczer-2 remarked to herself as she sat at a table and looked out over the crowded plaza at the city which surrounded her. It seemed to her like a city slightly out of character for its location: an assemblage of steel-and-glass towers and large monolithic masonry buildings, which would better lend itself to the surface of an industrial-age planet like Kane's World, not the inside surface of the Zeta Cygni Dyson Sphere. She did have to admit, though, that she did not find it anathema, just... unique. It was just different, which was probably why it worked so well. That concept did not, however, apply to her own state of mind, in her opinion. She felt very out of place at the moment. And out of character as well: she was not wearing her usual black and dark blue body armor, but a very simple ensemble consisting of a denim jacket and jeans, a black t-shirt, and a pair of Reeboks. Sure, it was still dark blue and black, but it felt so strange to be wearing such things. It was different, and in her case it wasn't working very well. Of course it was more than just a change in wardrobe that was bothering her. Of late she noticed that there were a great many things that were having an effect on her. Why, just today she'd passed by a small park with a fountain near its center, and found herself very intrigued by the sight of children playing around that fountain. So much so that she'd located the nearest park bench and sat down to observe for a long time. Sure she'd seen enough children in her time, but she'd never made anything more than a casual or tactical observation. This was very different. There was something about the children that had an effect on her, and she couldn't quite understand what it was. Gryphon and his wife had returned earlier today. With their new baby. Everyone had been overjoyed to hear that not only had Kei recovered from her ordeal, her baby was in perfect health. Iczer-2 had spent much of today trying to understand why the news of the baby's birth had moved her as much as it had, and she'd spent the past couple weeks just trying to understand her own reactions to what Kei had gone through beforehand. It was a strange array of feelings she had about them, and all the people she lived among now for that matter. Strange, unfamiliar, and certainly unexpected. A year ago her only action on seeing these or any other members of the WDF would have been to kill. Now that she'd lived with these people for a while, had acquired a few friends and earned the WDF's trust -- a security clearance, of all things... She remembered how devastated everyone had been by what had happened to Kei, but more than that she remembered her *own* feelings of rage (a different kind of rage from what she was used to) and helplessness, and her surprise at feeling those feelings. She'd never felt this way, or even tried to feel this way, until she came here. She'd always thought she was designed not to have so many of the attitudes and emotions her sister had been created with; that was why Iczer-1 had been discarded, after all. She remembered quite distinctly being advised of this very fact by Largo. She was a weapon, designed to fight and command, not feel. And yet, here she was, feeling. Why the sudden change? There were a lot of things she did not know about herself, even after all this time. Up until recently she'd thought the most important things in life were knowing how to teleport, how to create and use her weapons, how to achieve warp velocity or stargate to any location, how to redirect the energy around her for other uses like shields, and of course, how to be an effective leader and commander. She'd always thought the primary purpose of her brain was to devise strategy and tactics, and had used it to fight in many a conflict over the years. Emotions were always limited to those needed for combat: anger, coldness, alertness, with just the right amount of bloodlust to make combat a most desirable game to play. (That last one could be called 'passion', she noted.) That was all she'd ever needed, all she ever thought there was... Until now...... She wished her sister Iczer-1 were here. Iczer-1 understood all of these things so much better, having lived with them all her life. Iczer-1 could probably explain to Iczer-2 what all these things were and what they meant. But Iczer-1 was not here. She was off somewhere wandering with Vaughn Gross; they could be anywhere between here and the Andromeda galaxy, maybe even further. Those two had become very attached to each other, she knew. It was a bit hard to miss. And actually it was rather... she searched for the word... 'cute'? Yes, it was cute. She sighed. Yet another thing for her to deal with. This was such a different world, and her lack of understanding of it made it a bit intimidating. And the idea that she might be lacking in understanding of herself did not help any; she didn't like the notion that there might be some part of her which was actually beyond her control. So how to gain an understanding of herself in order to gain an understanding of the world around her...? Iczer-1 was absent. Gryphon and MegaZone and all their friends might be able to explain the ways of life and love and all that but they couldn't hope to explain what *Iczer-2* was, what made *her* tick... Damn, but this was a pretty puzzle...... "Excuse me?" Someone had spoken to her. She turned and looked up at the source of the voice. The person was a young-looking man in a black suit, with a briefcase in one hand and a tray of food in the other. "May I sit here? There's no oth--" He trailed off then, and his face bore a similar expression to the one Iczer-2 had just acquired. A surge of recognition had just hit both of them, and it was quite obvious they'd both encountered someone they least expected to see... 10 JANUARY 1992 NEO-WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS "Very well then," Largo said with a half smile. "I will leave you to your work. Dr. Mann, I will need to speak with you afterwards." "Yes sir," answered one of the young -- perhaps the youngest -- men in the lab. "I'll be at your office as soon as I finish here. With your permission I'll begin working on a more reliable tank design." "We'll discuss that," Largo replied, and departed. Iczer-2 watched him leave. Already she disliked him. She knew who she was, what she was capable of, and she knew that made her superior to this man called Largo, and to everyone else around her. But, like it or not, it was because of him that she existed, and she owed him servitude on that account. For now. He'd told her briefly of her task, to eliminate these 'Wedge Rats', as they were called. There was something humiliating about it, as if she were some sort of pest exterminator. There were far better things for an Iczer to do than go around killing rodents. But again, it was her reason for existing, Largo had said. Fine. For now. The one Largo had called 'Dr. Mann', a tall, somewhat overweight fellow with shoulder-length brown hair, picked his way through the debris on the floor, toward her. Iczer-2 noted that he was the only one who was not averting his eyes every few seconds; he maintained his eye contact with her, in much the same way Largo had, although this man seemed much less bothersome to her somehow. Interesting. He gestured toward something behind her. "There's a bathroom through that door on your left," he said. "Thank you," she said in the same cool voice she'd addressed Largo with, and turned toward the door he'd identified. Behind her she heard another voice -- 'Dr. Astbury', she remembered Largo calling him -- asking to have a word with Mann. The syrupy red fluid which clung to her body washed off easily enough with the aid of the strong soap she'd been provided with. Her hair proved to be something of a greater challenge to clean, saturated with the stuff as it was, but with a good helping of shampoo the challenge was soon overcome. Each passing moment, it seemed like more and more information became available. She'd 'awakened' with a good measure of her systems already operational, allowing her to take control of the situation instantly. Now the rest of her body had gotten over its incept shock and was beginning to go to work. She could feel her energy reserves beginning to accumulate as her body began to draw energy from everything around it (even the kinetic and thermal energies of the shower water made a contribution); her senses told her they would be sufficient for 100% operating strength within the half hour, and with each passing moment she felt stronger and stronger, and capable of more of the feats of an Iczer. Complete control would be hers very soon. Her hearing began to detect something. This shower stall was situated against the wall which separated this room from the laboratory, and Iczer-2's enhanced hearing was beginning to pick up a conversation in the lab. It appeared to be a bit heated, and it sounded as though Mann was one of the involved parties. Interesting. She pressed one ear against the wall and listened more intently. It didn't help at first, so she willed herself to hear more. Her brain got the message, and diverted some energy to her auditory systems. Instantly the noise of the shower was shunted, and her other ear became far more sensitive to the sound vibrations striking the wall from the other side. She could hear it clearly now... "--know how you feel, Ian," she recognized the voice as Mann's. "But orders are orders." "We're talking about more than just weapons," another voice snapped back. Astbury's voice. "I still can't believe you agreed to this. How could you desecrate Nagisa's and Cobalt's work like this??" "I desecrated nothing," Mann replied, his voice remaining level. "I merely removed most of their designwork and replaced it with my own for this model. Largo was very specific when he told me what he wanted." "Yes," Astbury grated. "A killing machine." "You did not *have* to supervise this project, Ian," Mann said, his voice becoming more tense. Evidently his patience was wearing thin. "You did not *have* to be my supervisor. You did not have to take credit for my work, either. You never did tell me why you're taking credit for things *I* created." There was a pause, then Astbury spoke again. "I don't like you, Mann. We call you 'Doctor', but you have no credentials of any kind. I don't think you have any regard for scientific values, or moral values. You're obviously one of Largo's little friends. I don't think you care about anyone or anything but yourself, and I think you will do anything for anyone who offers you money and power." "Frankly, Astbury," Mann grated. "I don't give a damn what you think. For the record, I don't like Largo any more than you do. But the fact is, this company saved me from ending up on the street begging for spare change. And I pay my debts, so deal with it." "Trading values for dollars, I see," Astbury growled. "You'll make a good company man." "Do remember, Ian, that I have a meeting with Largo after I finish here. Would you like me to forward your complaints? Would you like me to tell him about the design modifications you 'requested'? You may end up with more than a suspension this time." Silence followed for a time, and then Astbury spoke again: "Go brief her, then, and call me afterwards." A pair of footsteps could be heard exiting the lab, and then another pair began moving in the general direction of the bathroom. Iczer-2 moved away from the wall, her senses automatically resetting as she did so. She checked herself over and decided she was clean enough, and shut off the water. Seemed Dr. Mann owed Largo as well. Interesting, and perhaps useful sometime in the future. A knock on the door could be heard. "May I come in?" Mann spoke. "Come," Iczer-2 replied as she began towelling herself off. NEW AVALON THE PRESENT "D... Dr. Mann?" Iczer-2 half stammered, still a bit stunned. It had been a few decades since she'd seen him... what was he doing here?? "Iczer-2?" R-Type answered, a bit surprised himself. It was definitely her, but she was 'out of uniform', and was obviously in some kind of distress if she'd lost her composure at a chance encounter like this one. She'd always been much more commanding in the few previous meetings they'd had. What was wrong here? Eris was up to *something* here... "Please... please sit down!" Iczer-2 said, very quickly. R-Type did so. He was now somewhere between curious and concerned as to what was going on here. He decided to dispense with the usual 'how have you been?' introductory small talk, since it was hardly appropriate. Instead, he simply cut directly to the chase: "You seem... troubled by something. I assume you want to talk about it." "Yes," she replied. He was direct and to the point, as always. She'd always appreciated that. "Do... do you have time?" He glanced at his watch. "Sure, if you don't mind my eating while we talk. Did you want anything? Food, I mean," he elaborated when she looked at him quizzically. "I've never needed such things," Iczer-2 replied. "You should know that." "Yes, I do know, but your body *is* capable of metabolizing this stuff," R-Type answered, indicating the contents of his tray. "I thought you would have tried it by now." "I've never needed it," she repeated, and then trailed off. Wonderful, *another* thing she'd "never needed"... R-Type decided that perhaps he should listen to what she had to say before he had any food, so he ignored the complaints of his stomach and set his tray aside for the moment. "Okay... tell me what's bothering you, Two." Iczer-2 nodded, and proceeded to relate the experiences she'd been having of late. The strange new feelings and emotions, the near incessant barrage of strange new things and her reactions to them. Coming into the WDF, making friends out of former enemies, and just existing in a manner vastly different from what she was used to. None of this fit the description of the carefully controlled environment she was used to working under. "It's all so *different*," she finished, looking despondent. "Everything I understood is gone. Everything has changed so much; it's all so... so new. And *I'm* starting to feel different, and I don't understand that. Seeing people get hurt never used to bother me, but now... I thought I was never supposed to feel like this at all. Everyone here is so... nice to me, and... and I'm starting to... I think I'm starting to *enjoy* that." She looked at R-Type, a worried expression on her face. "You're my creator. Is something wrong with me? I need to know!" "I'm not your *only* creator, Two." "No, but you're the only one left, and it's just blind luck that I've run into you. Please. Tell me. Am I malfunctioning?" R-Type looked thoughtful for a moment. From a technical standpoint Iczer-2's behavior *could* qualify as a malfunction: she *had* been designed to be devoid of anything such as conscience or compassion, or anything else that might have made her any less of a combatant. Yet she was acquiring those very qualities now. Hm... perhaps her brain had filled in the blanks...? And he really had no desire to refer to this event as a malfunction. He knew he couldn't, really, considering the nature of her design. "No..." R-Type said. "No, I don't think there's anything wrong with you. You were created using a technology which was light years ahead of its time, even now. We knew how to make it work for us, but the details of it were beyond our full comprehension, and I think we're seeing that proved right now. We did not include much of what you're experiencing in your list of parameters, but it's happening anyway. Actually it's quite impressive, I think." "But... but if this isn't a malfunction, then what *is* it?" "It sounds to me like you're going through a full-scale environmental adjustment, and part of that adjustment is the creation of emotions and feelings you need to better interact here. Think of it as a, uh, 'system upgrade'. It's really quite impressive. Your brain is creating all this practically out of thin air." "But it feels so strange." "Because it's all happening at once and it's all brand new to you, and it *is* the exact opposite of everything you've ever dealt with. That's why it feels so strange. I can understand that, really." He leaned in closer. "You want to know a secret? I feel pretty strange here myself. All these years working against these people and suddenly Gryphon shows up in my office and *bang*, I'm here. No questions, no crosschecks. Nothing. It's a *total* environmental shift." "You seem to be taking it rather well." "Inside I'm screaming. My point is, everything here is 100% new to me too, so I do know where you're coming from. "If you want my opinion, I think you're in even better condition than ever before. Personally I do think you were incomplete when we created you in 1992. You were missing so many of the things your sister has, all these things that you're feeling now. I left those things out because I was ordered to do so, and I do follow orders." "I know," she answered. "I used to kill people who didn't follow orders myself, so I understand your position. And it's not like it mattered to me; I didn't know the difference until now." "So anyway," R-Type continued. "I think you're doing just fine, remarkably well in fact. I think you just need to give yourself time to get accustomed to all this. Seek new experiences, let things happen, and try not to get overwhelmed by it all; that kind of thing. There's certainly a lot of good people here who'll be very helpful. I think you'll be fine." There was a brief moment of silence, and then Iczer-2 smiled. It wasn't the dark smirk of a warrior, but a gentle show of gratitude. It seemed out of character at first glance, but after a moment of observation R-Type realized that it did look very nice on her. Then she spoke, in a gentle voice to match the gentle smile. "Thank you... Father." "'Father'??" R-Type's eyes widened rather perceptibly. "Well... you created me -- helped create me, anyway -- and you certainly know more about me than I do. I think you deserve a title... 'Father' seems appropriate." "Um, okay, but I'd much prefer to be called R-Type, or Larry. I just feel better when people call me by a name instead of a title." Iczer-2 nodded, then paused. "A name..." "Hm?" "A long time ago I told someone I didn't need a name. But now... now I think I do..." She looked at him. Obviously she had no idea how to proceed, so... "Um, well... does this mean you want me to pick one?" "I'd appreciate the suggestion, Fa-- R-Type." "All right." He looked at her for a long moment, almost as if he were boring into the innermost parts of her being with his eyes. Several names appeared and were discarded in his mind. A couple kept returning, and competing with one another, until finally there was only one left that really seemed to work. "Hm..." he spoke. "How about... 'Selene'?" Iczer-2 blinked. Her brain took in this little bit of data. She considered the sound, and compared it with the sound of so many other names she'd heard or spoken over the centuries. It was an unique name, a bit fancier than so many of the others she knew. And it had a pleasant ring to it. It was perfect. "'Selene'... I like that a lot." She smiled. "You'll need a surname, too," R-Type remarked, then quickly added. "But I think you should choose it, and don't use mine, either. 'Mann' doesn't go with 'Selene', in my opinion." He grinned. Selene nodded. "Thank you so much, Fath-- I mean--" R-Type waved her off. "Don't mention it... Daughter." A bigger grin this time, and Selene smiled right back at him. That smile *really* looked good on her, R-Type noted to himself. And she was looking a lot better than she had a few minutes ago... Whoops. He looked at his watch, and his expression fell just a bit. "Oh damn, running *very* low on time. Guess I'll have to put the cheesecake in the refrigerator or something... if I can smuggle it in without a decent bag..." He sighed and began to tear into his cheeseburger very quickly. "Um..." Selene said hesistantly. "Could... could I try that?" "Hm, you mean the cheesecake?" She nodded. "Sure, you can have it if you want," he said, handing her the plate and a fork. What the hell, it'd be easier than trying to sneak it into the building, and he could always get another piece later. And besides, hadn't he just told her to seek new experiences? This certainly qualified. Selene held the fork in her hand, uncertain for a moment, and then all of a sudden she understood: her brain had found the never activated food-consumption algorithms -- a very-high-speed means of energy-gathering, she realized; there were some times over the past centuries when this would have come in very handy, but oh well -- and started them in motion, and immediately she knew how to eat. With the tines of the fork she cut a small piece from the front of the wedge and carefully popped it into her mouth. Her eyes widened as her taste buds flared to life and defined the nature of the substance she was ingesting. It was very sweet, slightly tangy, and from a technical standpoint, *very* high in energy. Very interesting. "Mm!" she remarked. "You're lucky, actually," R-Type commented. "You don't *have* to eat this stuff. I'm addicted to it, and it contributes to weight problems." Selene was about to take another, much larger bite when she stopped. "Will this affect me adversely?" she asked, a little worried. "Not likely," he replied. "Your body is designed to keep itself at optimum. It should just convert any excess mass it encounters into energy, and vent it overboard if you're already at full capacity. Shouldn't be any problems, so eat all you like. But do expect a rather large energy boost; food is a lot more concentrated than ambient energy." Selene nodded and, thus reassured, dove into the cheesecake, obviously enjoying herself quite a bit. [Man, I could use something like that,] R-Type remarked to himself as he finished off his cheeseburger, wiped his hands, and downed the rest of his root beer. [Maybe I should work on some fat-breakdown nanochine one of these days. Bet I could really rake it in...] "Well, Tw-- er, Selene," he said, mentally kicking himself for that slip. "I need to get to the office and have a meeting with the Master right now. Think you'll be okay now?" "Mm-hmm," she mumbled through a mouthful of cheesecake. Then she swallowed and finished: "Yes, I'll be all right now. Um... do you think perhaps we could meet again and talk some more? I... I rather like speaking with you." "If you like," he answered as he got to his feet. "Just stop by the office building and ask for me. For once, I should actually be fairly easy to track down." She grinned knowingly; R-Type had a long history of being difficult to locate, but knowing that he was here would uncomplicate things quite a bit. "All right then," she said. "Goodbye for now." "See you," he waved, deposited his trash in the nearest bin, and headed across the plaza, in the direction of the nondescript office building which was GENOM's temporary worksite until the official structure was completed. With a little encouragement and reassurance, Iczer-2 -- correction, 'Selene' -- was adjusting to this new life rather well, Larry observed. He just hoped he'd be able to adjust as well. Very surreal day here; he didn't know how much more of this he could deal with rationally... 5:40 PM "How much time?" "Twenty minutes to pickup," Aki replied. "You're still on schedule." "Good," R-Type said as he washed the last of the shaving gel off his face and toweled off, and then proceeded to set his face on fire with the aid of some Old Spice. He'd nicked himself a few times, as usual. His skin had never taken well to shaving no matter what he did: electric razors didn't cut far enough and straight razors would snag and cut too far. You'd think they would have come up with a better shaving system by 2389. Fortunately nanites had come to his aid and patched the tiny cuts almost instantly, so all he had to do was wash the dried blood off after a couple minutes. One of the advantages of having nanotech in one's bloodstream, especially on occasions like this. He attended to his face, deodorized the rest of himself, then ambled into his bedroom. Tonight's wardrobe selection laid neatly on his bed: a carefully pressed white shirt, a black vest with gold trim, black suitjacket and matching pants, black tie with diagonal gold pinstripes, and a gold tie tack, carefully polished black shoes, and a dark green silk handkerchief (he'd planned to use another color but had been asked to wear green; why he didn't know yet). "Still say you're overdoing it on the black," Jilehr remarked as he began to get dressed. "Bite me," he shot back. "I like black." "Jeez, haven't heard you say 'bite me' in a *long* time." "Really? Gee, now that you mention it..." It *had* been several years, maybe even decades... "It looks good on you," Aki offered, smiling. "Thanks," he smiled back. With the passage of another five minutes and the use of a hairbrush to smooth his hair into something he could pull back into a ponytail, he was fully dressed and prepared for his task. 5:55 PM Through an elaborate combination of optical tricks, machinery, and what could only be described as 'techno-magic', the Cianbro Corporation had made it possible for the city of New Avalon to have night and day, and seasons. It was a bit baffling for the unprepared. You would think that a city such as this, on the inside of a Dyson Sphere, would be subject to a constant state of noonday sun, and a constant temperature and weather pattern. But this was not the case. The environment was nearly indistinguishable from that of the temperate zones on Earth, and if you didn't know better, you would swear you were actually on a planet. With nightfall, of course, a bit of the magic was lost: due to the fact that the 'stars' were actually the windows of the massive shipyard complex within the Sphere, it made for a sky which was a little too orderly to be 'natural'. Still, that was a minor difficulty at best, and no one saw any need to bitch about it in light of all the other good qualities of the city. Cianbro had worked enough miracles as it was; the business with the 'stars' could certainly be forgiven. Evening was just starting to turn into night now. As the daylight slowly took the first steps toward a fade into blackness, lights from the houses, apartments and other buildings began to dot the cityscape, and the streetlights began to compensate for the increasing darkness by providing light of their own. On one such street alongside one of the larger residential complexes in the city, a car cruised at a moderately high speed. The car could have been mistaken for an ancient Terran Oldsmobile, were it not for the fact that it was twenty feet in the air and had the suspension and drive systems which were common to most aircars in that day and age. It banked across a streetcorner and turned up one of the smaller, winding roadways which led into the complex. It cruised until it was traveling alongside a row of buildings which faced into a large grassy park, and then began to decelerate. Finally, about two-thirds of the way up the street, it came to a stop and settled to the ground, parking alongside a driveway in which another ancient Terran vehicle, a red Dodge Daytona, was parked. As the driver's door opened and the car's sole occupant exited, the front door of the apartment he'd parked in front of opened, the inside light silhouetting the large man standing in the doorway. The driver seemed to hesitate for a moment, then walked forward, as the other man, who was dressed considerably more casually than the car driver and was wiping his hands with some sort of shop rag, began to descend the apartment's front steps and headed toward him. "Good evening, Admiral," R-Type said, putting his formal voice forward. "Hope I'm not too early." MegaZone cringed a little and made a pained gesture with his right hand. "Hey R-Type, do yourself a favor and chill, huh? We're all friends here. Call me Zoner." "Sorry Zoner," R-Type said, looking a little sheepish. "Force of habit." "And no, you're not too early," Zoner continued with a grin. "Come on in. Yuri'll be ready in a few minutes." "Nice place," R-Type remarked, looking around as they entered the apartment. He found it interesting that the Fleet Admiral of the WDF lived in an apartment which was very similar to the one he inhabited now. He'd half expected him to have something bigger. Then he shrugged inwardly: whatever works. "Yeah, it works pretty well for us," Zoner said as he headed toward the kitchen table, where the guts of some currently unidentifiable piece of cybertech were arranged on a dropcloth. "How's your setup, by the way?" "Works great," R-Type answered. "I like being able to see the city from my front window. That was the winner for me. I still have to say thanks to Eve for reading my mind like that." Zoner snickered and went back to working on the mess on the table. "Have a seat," he offered. "There's Coke and Dew in the fridge, if you want." "No thanks," R-Type said, looking out the front window. "Think I'll just idle right here. Nice view." He parked himself at said window and proceeded to idle, lost in thought. Zoner regarded him for a moment, then proceeded to get thoroughly involved with the object on the table. Didn't take a genius to figure out that R-Type was nervous, and Zoner knew exactly why. Eve had been right: there was a Wedge Rat under that suit, but the poor guy had been on the wrong side of the tracks for way too long. He needed to be convinced that he wasn't doing anything wrong, but that wasn't something Zoner could do, any more than he'd already tried to. R-Type needed to hear it from the person who, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was very close to now. Eris willing, a very important step would be taken tonight. Both men were jarred from their respective thought trains by the sound of a female voice from the hallway: "So, what do you think?" Both turned in the direction of the voice, and both immediately ^Z'ed any and all other thoughts they'd been having at the time. Yuri could only be described as radiant. Few other words are appropriate to describe the effect of her velvety black, emerald- green trimmed, strapless evening gown which reached to within an inch of the floor. She wore dark green gloves which stretched to just past her elbows, and sparkling emeralds dangled from her ears. Her hair was pulled into a braid which was draped over her right shoulder, held together by a thin gold ribbon. A lavender shade of eyeshadow accentuated her hazel eyes, and she'd used just the right amount of pink blush on her cheeks to define a middle ground between the eyeshadow and the ruby-red lipstick she wore. Needless to say, R-Type and Zoner were slightly stunned. "Wow..." R-Type said, quickly re-educating himself on the operation of his vocal cords. Zoner let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Nice..." Yuri giggled and twirled around once, and both men found themselves a little disappointed when the action was not accompanied by sparkles and the sound of tinkling bells. Oh well, sometimes you just can't have everything. Where would you put it? "You... you look terrific, Yuri," R-Type said, still in the process of locating and properly using his voice. "You're not so bad yourself," Yuri answered, looking over R- Type's black ensemble. R-Type now understood why he'd been asked to wear the green handkerchief. Good fashion sense, there. Yuri headed toward Zoner, who raised a hand stained with some kind of fluid. Obviously close contact was a bit out of the question. "Don't get too close to me," he said. "I'm kinda anti-formal right now, as you can see." Yuri snorted. "Don't give me that. You're always anti-formal." She put her gloved hands on his shoulders and gave him a little kiss, then whispered something in his ear which made him snarf. "See you tomorrow," she said, which made R-Type double-blink. Then she headed straight for R-Type and latched onto his arm. "Come on Larry, let's go get to know each other better." R-Type glanced back at Zoner, a somewhat perplexed look on his face, but he didn't have time to do much else, as Yuri fairly dragged him out of the apartment. The door closed behind them, leaving Zoner free to die laughing in private. Aki had, as requested, come up with a list of the best upper- echelon restaurants to be found in New Avalon, and had contacted R-Type and Yuri once she had the results. After a brief session of "I dunno, where do you wanna eat?" "I dunno, where do *you* wanna eat?", and the obligatory giggling fit that followed such an exchange, a decision had been made. The name "Yahagi's" didn't exactly make one think of Italian cuisine. Indeed, R-Type thought at first that Jilehr was playing some kind of joke on them, but he was soon proven wrong. Yahagi's was indeed an Italian restaurant, and very definitely an establishment made for the upper class. It had all the amenities that helped to contribute to the outrageous prices common to an upper-class restaurant, such as a detachment of hosts and hostesses waiting on you hand and foot (and all but demanding massive tips in return), excessively fancy tables, chairs, tableware, chandeliers... you name it, it was there. They even had live entertainment: on a small stage near the center of the dining room, a huge ivory-colored grand piano sat, and it was being played by a black-suited Salusian who had excellent command of the instrument. Yahagi's wasn't just a restaurant, it was an entire experience. It was perfect. Everything was very formal and very carefully arranged and controlled, and it went without saying that social etiquette was of the utmost importance. R-Type, of course, fit right in, and Yuri certainly knew enough about high society to operate without any difficulty. The food was excellent (they had an incredible lasagna that rivaled Birraporetti's back on Earth, and the garlic bread was simply unparalleled), as was the music: as luck would have it, the two got a table right next to the piano, and so they got to hear up close just how good this Salusian fellow really was; he really knew his stuff, drawing from memory a selection of songs which included some of the great classical composers from Earth: Gershwin, Bach and Handel, to name just a few. There was no shortage of high-class entertainment, to be sure. When they weren't actually eating, R-Type and Yuri were quite busy just talking, getting really reacquainted with each other. Up until an hour or so before, the mad rush of Getting Everything Done At Once had been dictating R-Type's life, what with getting moved into his new pad and figuring out where everything was, not to mention getting down to GENOM's temporary office building and going through what turned out to be almost two hours of non-stop meeting of the people who would be his senior staff and subordinates in New Avalon once the structure was actually built. Yuri, as it turned out, had been doing a fair amount of rushing herself that day: between getting her dress bought and fitted, and doing about a million different things in attempt to stop being so jittery about the impending evening, she hadn't had much time to relax either. In fact it had taken her the better part of an hour, this afternoon, just to pick up the phone and call R-Type. She'd felt like a schoolgirl all over again. R-Type felt slightly consoled, knowing he wasn't the only person who was Nervous As Hell. But all that was over now. Now it was time to sit down and just talk. And get caught up. "So," he said to her. "Tell me what's happened in the last nine years." It was eight and a half, actually, but it was easier to say 'nine', so deal. "Oh goddess, you would not *believe* everything that went on," Yuri replied. "Design, design and redesign; that's practically all we were doing here from 2380 on. GENOM had a full armada, so we needed to have a fleet to match it." She shook her head. "Never realized life could get so *crazy*. *Man* there was a lot to do: we had to build the entire fleet from ground zero, obviously. We had to recruit personnel from everywhere; that was a challenge and a half. And next comes tracking down all the old friends and allies... blah..." "I take it you had your hands full," R-Type commented. "Yeah, you could say that," Yuri replied with a grin. Then her expression softened. "Having all that work helped a lot, though." "Oh?" "Yeah..." she paused briefly. "It was pretty lonely here. But we had a fleet to put together, and everyone just put their personal problems on hold and went to work, and they kept on going. Ben and Lord F and everyone else just kept building and building. It was really something to watch. I... I needed the distraction, to be honest. ... And I had to help Kei sort herself out, too. *She* had a lot to think through, and it took a long time." "Yeah, I can imagine," he remarked. "Then on June 18th last year," she finished. "Kei finally decided she was ready to talk to Ben. Of course I let him know right away. Three days later he showed up, and not too far behind him..." She trailed off; the impact of Zoner's return still got to her a little; it wasn't that long ago. "Hey, told you he'd come back," R-Type said with a grin. It was obvious to him how much it meant to her. He could see her eyes screaming with joy. "Heh, yeah," Yuri got herself back under control. "Next thing I knew we were gearing up for the big fight, and you know what happened after that." "Aye," R-Type said, glancing out a darkened window. "We were gearing up too, although *we* got started in 2382. Soon as Largo found out the WDF was definitely coming back, the weapons division was in full swing again, and I got sucked in (big surprise there)... which is why I stopped sending Christmas cards in 2383, by the way. Being Chief Biocyberneticist and a leading tech designer and a decorated officer and all that garbage, well... I had to become Top Secret again and make my latest contribution to the war effort." He rolled his eyes. "Latest contribution?" "Mm-hmm. Largo brings us into the design room and says 'Make a battle station.' Nobody has a clue what he wants, so of course I have to suggest the Death Star, and of course he loves it and makes me design coordinator for the Armored Tyranny and Terror Project." "You worked on the AT&T?" Yuri, for some reason, did not feel the least bit surprised to hear this. In fact, it was amusing in a certain way. "Yeah, can you believe it? Mister 'Star Wars' strikes again. So anyway, I end up on the design team for the thing, and I know it's gonna be a killer battle station, one which could cause major havoc. So, of course I try to sneak in a weakness I knew the right people would find and give you guys an edge, but of course Largo noticed that the Small Thermal Exhaust Port Right Below The Main Port led right to the main reactor and of course he had it taken out." He sighed and arched an eyebrow. "Maybe I should have left off the 'Insert Torpedo Here' sign and the bullseye." Yuri snarfed and tried not to break, which would have been impolite under the circumstances. Her mind had created the rather silly image of an AT&T with a large bullseye and a bunch of flashing arrows at the end of one of its trenches, and now it refused to go away. Once again the humor spread around and Larry had to do his share of exercising restraint as well. The temptation to break was very strong, but he kept a leash on it. They did manage to keep themselves under control, though: R-Type found himself looking into Yuri's eyes at one point, and discovered it had a calming effect on him. Coincidentally, Yuri did a much similar thing, with similar results. The end result of this was that they ended up just looking into each other's eyes, not saying a word. At about the same time the pianist finished the tune he had been playing, Yuri spoke again: "Have I told you how good it is to see you again, Larry?" It took Larry a second or so to answer, being as he was temporarily lost in Yuri's eyes. "Yeah... yeah, I think you have. Couple times now." He tried to grin but his face didn't seem to want to cooperate at that particular moment, so he continued speaking instead. "It's good to see you again too, Yuri." He felt something on his left hand, then, and looked down to see Yuri's gloved right hand resting on top of it. He regarded their hands for a moment, then looked up at Yuri again, really not sure what to say or do. Yuri just looked right back at him, and seemed to be similarly at a loss for words or action. Meanwhile, from his perch not far above, the pianist had spent the last few moments unobtrusively observing them while trying to decide what he should play next. As he watched them just holding hands and looking into each other's eyes, he hit upon another Earth classic he knew. Grinning to himself, he flexed the muscles in his hands, loosening them up just a bit, and then began to play. /* Claude Debussy "Clair De Lune" */ Neither R-Type nor Yuri made any sound or motion as the gentle piano music began to fill in the empty spaces nearby. To a casual observer, it would seem they were lost in each other's eyes. Perhaps they were. Something was different now. The moment she had touched him, everything had changed slightly; he could feel something new... or more correctly, something old; an old feeling from several years back. And although it felt very much like what he had experienced in 2380, he soon realized that it wasn't *his* feeling he was experiencing now. It was *hers*. Time and again the memories of 2380 had returned to both their minds, time and again they had worked quickly to put those memories on the back burner in order to concentrate on the tasks at hand, chief among them the building of their respective armadas. He could feel that now; they had done the exact same things when they had said goodbye to each other that year. Now, with this simple physical contact, a simple handhold, the two empaths had begun to stretch tentative tendrils out toward each other again, tendrils which began to brush against their respective souls. And they began to realize then, *really* realize, just how much they had missed each other for the past nine years (eight and a half, if you still insist on being technical). The piano came to a gentle close once again a few minutes later, and again there was no sound other than the quiet rumbling of the many subdued dinner conversations throughout the restaurant. The pianist again glanced toward the black-clad couple: they were still lost in each other's eyes, and now they had both pairs of hands clasped together in the center of the table. He couldn't see the man's face, but it looked as though the girl's eyes were starting to mist over. Then he heard the man speak to the girl in a subdued voice. "Let's go outside and talk." "Mm" was her response. Hand in hand, the two got up and headed towards a stairway which led to the restaurant's upper level, and to a good-sized open balcony. The pianist watched them go. Looked as though he might have hit a little closer to home than he'd thought. [Hope I didn't overdo it,] he thought to himself, and then shrugged the matter off and set about selecting another song to play. There were still a lot of other guests to entertain, after all. The New Avalon night was cool and clear, and the air had a sea-breeze moistness to it that reminded Larry of spring and summer nights in Irvine. The major difference was that the "stars" in the sky were actually the lights of the UPNS complex, and also the myriad running lights on the AT&T, which was now floating overhead at a respectable distance. It was a pattern which, even with the slightly random position of the AT&T, was still a little too orderly to be a real spacescape, but there was very little to be done about that. This was the inside of a Dyson Sphere, after all. They were lucky to even have nighttime here. Still, in its own way, it was quite beautiful. "Hm," R-Type remarked as he gazed up at the glittering battle station. "Guess that little beast really is good for something besides blowing things up." "Yeah," Yuri replied softly, holding on to his right arm with both of hers. "You do good work." R-Type glanced at her, not really sure whether he should react to that statement with humor or seriousness, or something else altogether. Then their eyes met, and everything seemed to slow down a little. Yuri's eyes were definitely misting over now, which immediately made Larry concerned. "Something wrong?" he asked. "Is all this stuff too boring for you or anything?" "No, no," she answered quickly. "I'm having a wonderful time. Everything's been so beautiful tonight... I just... I..." She stopped, and for another moment they just looked wordlessly into each other's eyes again. Considering what he'd felt earlier, Larry was quite certain a flood of emotion was on the rise, from both of them. Then his guess was proven correct as Yuri suddenly fell against him and latched on to him tightly, and it all hit him like a whirlwind. Oh boy did it hit him. "Oh Eris, Larry," she whispered in a choked voice. "Please just hold me and don't let go." R-Type did the only sensible thing, the only *sane* thing: he encircled her with his arms and pulled her in, and they clung to each other, seemingly for dear life. He let the initial empathy shockwave crash over him, and he unconsciously reacted by generating a backlash of his own, which Yuri could not miss, which she didn't want to miss. Eris knew there was so much that had been held back for far too long. And then, without another thought or hesitation, they opened up to each other, reestablished contact. Or perhaps the empathic link had never actually closed and they had simply opened the floodgates. In either case, both were immediately suffused with a powerful wash of feelings and near-thoughts, and both were aware of how powerful their feelings for each other truly were. It seemed so clear now. Gods, it had been so long. Nine years before, a bond had been firmly established. It has been said that such bonds, forged as they are through pain and grief, and all too often irrationality, are bonds better left forgotten, like so many passing fancies in the night. Such bonds are all too often little more than sympathetic sexual unions, petty obsessions or unsuccessful escapes, prone to degrading the lives of everyone involved by them when they come back as skeletons in a closet. But this was not one of those. This bond had been one of mutual respect, one in which neither party had imposed any demands on the other. The intents and the desires had been made clear, but so had the unwillingness to carry through with such things until the existing problems had been patched. It had provided a release for the pain in a different way, a far more proper way. It was a show of respect, and it had earned respect as a result. When they had parted, they had done their best to keep thoughts of each other silent. After all, they were able only to assume that they would never see each other again, their separate paths dictated by opposing forces and destinies. Nevertheless, the thoughts remained. Attempts to quiet them had been made in the form of the occasional greeting card, with moderate success. But the simple fact was: neither had been able to keep their mind off the other. For nine years. Now they were together again. "I've missed you, Larry," Yuri whispered against his neck. "All these years, I've missed you so much." "I missed you too," he whispered back. "I... I haven't been able to keep my mind off of you, Yuri." "Same here," she answered, her hold on him tightening even more. "There's so much more I want to tell you. There's so much I want you to tell me. Gods, it's been so long." "Shhh..." R-Type whispered soothingly into her hair. The emotional flow was threatening to get both of them crying, which would be a bit impractical at this time. But to be truthful, neither of them really gave a damn at that moment. "I know. You have no idea how much I want to tell you. I... I love you so much..." A few minutes passed in which no words were spoken, largely because they weren't really necessary: all kinds of emotions continued to pass freely between them. R-Type had never thought he could perceive emotions this intensely, but he was not here to analyze the strength of his own empathy. The matter of current importance was letting Yuri know how much he loved her, and she returned his feelings just as strongly, as they allowed their souls to reach out toward one another and begin to intertwine. The time that passed was both an eternity and an instant, and then the two pulled away from each other, very slowly, and their eyes met once again. At that time they took note of the dampness of their respective faces, and Larry quickly pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed the moisture off Yuri's face, then dealt with his own. In all that time they never lost eye contact with each other. Even artificial optics are windows to the soul, and to an outside observer it would once again seem they were momentarily lost in each other's eyes. And once again, perhaps they were. A spark had flared. Yuri leaned forward, barely a centimeter. Taking the cue, Larry responded in kind. Slowly they drew closer and closer, until their lips finally touched in an ultra-light, gentle kiss. Then another, which lasted considerably longer, and began to deepen into something which was more complex, more urgent. And the empathy between them began to shift gears, taking on a whole different dimension. It was a little more than just a spark. After oxygen debt finally forced them to disengage, they stayed where they were for a few minutes, in silence, cooling down. The sounds of piano music continued to waft gently out of the restaurant, and a cool breeze passed over them. Finally Yuri spoke: "I'd like to go back to your place, if we could." "We can't do that." "Why not?" she pulled away and looked at him, confused. "Because," he said, pointing back inside. "Our dinner's getting cold in there." A couple seconds later and it was all Yuri could do to keep from laughing hysterically. 7:45 PM R-Type stood at the picture window next to the couch, a wine cooler in his hand, contemplating the sea of electricity which was downtown New Avalon. The view of the corporate sector from here was perfect. Eve must have advised the management that he liked to see the Concrete Jungle when looking out of his windows. He made another mental note to say thanks when next he met her. After finishing their dinner in relative silence, he and Yuri had gotten in his car and driven -- actually "flown" might be more accurate, since the Olds was an aircar -- around the city for a little while. Yuri spent most of that time leaning against his shoulder, and neither of them spoke very much. Then they'd come back here, to his place. An old CD of gentle piano music had been put on, and they had quietly danced (well, more like swayed back and forth while clinging to each other) in his living room, only emotions daring to break the silence. The last song was coming to a close now. They hadn't danced to this one, because Yuri had excused herself and gone to the bathroom. Some things simply can't be avoided. So Larry had gravitated in the direction of the window and contemplated the day, the evening, and the present. It was very hard to believe less than 24 hours had passed since his arrival in New Avalon. It was very hard to believe that, in that very short frame of time, he had established a new home, and an incredible new job, and had adjusted to the new environment with almost no friction whatsoever. And it was even harder to believe that he had reached the juncture he was at right now. He had definitely not expected to be anywhere near this point after only one day. Hell, he hadn't expected to be here at all. Those factors had combined and, partially eclipsing all he had felt tonight, sounded an alarm in the back of his head which demanded consideration. Was this right? A hand fell softly on his shoulder. He glanced down and noted that it was no longer sheathed in the green glove which had covered it for most of the evening. He set his drink on the windowsill, then turned and looked at the hand's owner. The gold ribbon was gone. She'd undone the braid, and now her hair fell freely behind her back. She'd taken her heels off, and she'd removed the makeup from her face. Her earrings were gone, too. It made her look a lot more like the girl he'd met in 2380. It didn't make her any less beautiful, or any less desirable. She hugged him then, and he felt desire coming from her, very clearly: she wanted him. He could feel it in himself as well. He stalled then, the alarm jumping into the foreground in response to his own rather lustful thoughts, trying to find a reason why this should go no further. What was missing? He sensed no hint of reservation within her, and hadn't he said he would love to do this, long ago? he thought to himself. "What's wrong?" she asked, sensing his internal angst. He sighed and shook his head. "I... I dunno, really..." He hesitated. "I feel like I'm going too fast for some reason. Am I? I mean, I've been here less than 24 hours... I dunno..." He sighed, feeling thoroughly confounded. Yuri felt his quandary; his emotions were very clear to her right then. Always the gentleman, even now, she thought to herself, smiling inwardly. It was obvious to her that he was deeply concerned for her well-being. It was also obvious that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. He was being far too cautious now. Considering what he had been doing for most of his life, she could hardly blame him for thinking as he did. But the time for caution and concern was long past now, and he needed to realize that. She had to talk him down: "You're afraid you're going to hurt me somehow," she said softly. "Even after all this, you're afraid of hurting what Zoner and I have. That's it, isn't it?" Larry said nothing. Yuri knew she'd hit the mark dead-on. Now she had to show him this was not wrong. She tightened her hold on him. "Larry, do you know how long it's been since we've held each other like this?" "Mm, yeah... about an hour now, I think." "Oh, stop it," Yuri said after she'd finished snarfing. "Eight and a half years. It's been eight and a half years." "Yeah..." was all R-Type said. "Feels like a hell of a lot more than that..." "Mm-hmm," Yuri nodded against him. "It *did* feel a lot longer. Remember I told you how lonely I was? The truth is, I spent those years wishing you were there, just so I could hold you... just so *someone* would hold me. I would think of Zoner all the time... and I thought of you too... I missed you so much." His grip on her tightened. "I missed you too. Gods, how I missed you." Yuri released her hold on him then, and they held hands and never lost eye contact as she continued: "And I thought a lot about how I wanted you to do more than just hold me. I remembered what you said back then, about us, and you were right. I don't think I'll ever be able to say how happy I was when Zoner finally came back to me, and we're happier than we've ever been. I have you to thank for that." R-Type looked sheepish as Yuri kept talking: "But even after that, I still realized how much you meant to me, how much I loved you... how much I wanted you to make love to me. I could never forget you, Larry... I felt... incomplete... without you." He blinked. "I asked Zoner," Yuri went on. "'Is it really possible for me to love another person just as much as I love you?' He said yes, of course it was possible. I know I love you, and I don't think we can ever deny how much we want each other." "No, we can't..." his throat had gone a little dry. "I've had years to think about this... and so have you." Her grip on his hands tightened, and her voice became softer. "And I know that I love you the way I love Zoner. And I also know that it doesn't change what Zoner and I have in any way. "We don't need to worry about hurting each other anymore, Larry. That time is long gone. It's time to express what we feel for each other... and that's why I want to make love to you, and I want you to make love to me. Tonight. I don't want to wait any longer. Please." Larry swallowed. The simple fact was, everything she'd said made perfect sense. The alarm fell back into the rear of his skull, considerably muted. This wasn't happening out of the blue, in less than 24 hours, he realized. This had been nearly nine years in the making, the subject of very careful consideration. This was what she wanted, and Zoner seemed to be unconcerned about it, and so there was, really, no decent reason for refusing her. And he didn't want to refuse her. "All right," he said. He reached behind his head and pulled out the small elastic band which held his hair in its long ponytail, and his hair fell behind him like a wavy brown drapery. (Yuri noted that his hair was the same length as hers.) "As long as Zoner has no problems." "If he did," Yuri answered. "None of this would have happened tonight, we would not be having this conversation, and I would not do this." And with that she kissed him. It was the same soft, gentle kiss which they'd exchanged on the restaurant balcony. R-Type made the only rational response: he returned the kiss, and his arms wound slowly around her, pulling her close once again. As before, the first kiss was very simple and gentle. Unlike the events at the restaurant, though, the second kiss deepened into something much stronger and far more complex. Then a third kiss, even more urgent, hungry, and she pressed herself tightly against him as their tongues intertwined and began exploring each other's mouths, and the empathy between them, fueled by a new kind of fire, began to take on a much larger dimension, tripling in intensity and sending desire crashing down on them like a raging inferno. Somewhere in Larry's head, the alarm voiced its concern one last time: [Is this right?] [If it isn't, and that's *very* unlikely considering what we just heard,] the rest of him answered. [Then we'll just have to deal with it after the fact. Right now there is a glaringly obvious physical need that must be taken care of, okay?] The alarm fell silent then, and they both felt it: caution and concern ceased their complaining and were eclipsed by desire and passion, which continued to overtake the sum of their awareness. It was almost maddening. Gods, but they wanted each other. They looked into each other's eyes, saw the fire burning behind them, and knew the need for verbal communication was nearly at an end. Only two statements remained to be said in that way: "I love you, Larry." One. "Words will never describe how I love you, Yuri." Two. And before very long, they had lost themselves in each other completely. No other words were needed for the remainder of the night... /* Philip Aaberg "The Gift" _Winter's Solstice II_ */ 5:52 AM The view of the New Avalon corporate sector from the bedroom window was almost identical to that of the living room. There was really no difference, in truth. The curtain billowed gently as a small summer breeze came through the bedroom window, bringing with it the first small early-morning sounds of the city. It was getting fairly close to dawn, R-Type realized as he leaned against the sill. Zeta Cygni was beginning to rise (so it seemed) in the "east". It was, he thought, nearly indistinguishable from a sunrise on so many other planets he'd been to or lived on. The people at Cianbro had truly outdone themselves in designing this place. He felt strange. Well, not really strange per se, but... different. Something had happened tonight (besides the obvious), and he had been changed by it. He felt better, much better than he had for most of the past week, and even before. He was a little surprised that he felt as good as he did. Certainly the fact that he'd spent the last nine hours or so involved in one of the most -- if not *the* most -- incredible experiences of his life had quite a bit to do with it, but it was more than just that physical part. None of the fear and concern he had had for Yuri's well-being was present anymore. It had all just... disappeared. And now, he saw no need to be concerned for her in that way anymore; it was unnecessary. It was almost as if he'd shared consciousness with her and seen -- and understood -- everything from her viewpoint for a moment. Perhaps he had, because now he felt as though he'd known Yuri for a long long time. As a matter of fact he felt like he'd known Zoner for a long time too. That was rather interesting. [I guess this is what an empathic bond feels like,] he thought. And knowing all of that, not to mention understanding so much more, there was only one conclusion he could arrive at concerning everything that had happened, especially what had happened that night: This *was* right. He heard a rustling behind him, followed by a voice: "What're you doing over there?" "Oh, just watching the 'sunrise'," he answered as Yuri joined him at the window, just as naked as he was. "Looks like we made it all the way to tomorrow morning. I thought you fell asleep just now." He noted that this was probably the first time he'd talked this casually since coming here. He felt so relaxed now; it was wonderful. "Mm, for a little while. I thought I'd be waking *you* up every half hour." R-Type snarfed. "I don't know what it is," he said, shrugging. "Guys are supposed to fall asleep; it's a hormonal thing, according to the medical books. But I wake up instead. Guess I've got weird wiring or something." "Guess so," Yuri shrugged, and leaned against him, enjoying being this close to him. It had been a very long night, leaving no time for sleep, but she'd enjoyed every minute of it. It had left her physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. She also felt complete, more complete than she'd ever felt in, literally, a hundred years. She remembered very clearly that exquisite -- for lack of a better word -- moment in the midst of the passion when their souls had actually mixed for a few moments, and then had separated again, each carrying a fragment of the other back with them, and now she felt as though she'd known him for centuries. It was an empathic bond, a soul-bond, and a very strong one at that; it was a magical feeling. She put her arms around him, and almost unconsciously they pulled each other into an embrace, enjoying the feel of each other's naked skin. "Thank you," she whispered. "No, thank *you*," he answered, kissing her forehead. "I dreamed about this night for so long..." "Yeah... I did too; I just wouldn't admit it to myself. Hope I didn't disappoint you; I got a little overexcited for a while there." "Oh Eris, no. I wasn't exactly what you'd call calm, either." "True. Well at least the neighbors didn't complain." Both broke. The laughter went on for a few moments, then seemed to fade back into their bodies as they continued to hold each other. "Love you," he said. "Love you too," she answered. R-Type glanced out the window and sighed. "Morning already. Gee, how time flies sometimes. Well, at least I don't have to work today. When do you need to be back home?" "Weeellllll..." Yuri said thoughtfully. "I didn't say *when* I was going to be back, exactly..." R-Type raised an eyebrow as Yuri pulled away from him and climbed back into the bed. "I thought we could just stay here and talk for awhile. You did say you didn't have to work today..." R-Type emitted a loud sigh and made a big show of looking exasperated. "Oh well, I suppose... if I *must*..." Yuri snickered as he plodded over and climbed in next to her. "All for the greater good of something or other, I guess," he finished, causing her to break briefly. Then she snuggled up against him and kissed him. "We bonded tonight, you know," she said. "I know," he replied. "I can feel it. I feel like I've known you for centuries." "Likewise. You realize you're gonna be a part of my life forever now." "I think I'll survive." Both suffered a giggling fit for a few moments, then Larry spoke again: "I am deeply honored to be a part of your life." "Same here," Yuri grinned. "Guess we've got a *lot* of catching up to do, then." "Yeah, I guess so." She kissed him again. "It's good to see you so relaxed, Larry." "It's good to see you so happy," he answered with a smile. After that, they just lay in silence for a while, cuddling and occasionally kissing each other. Outside, the shadow of night continued to slowly disappear as Zeta Cygni began its rise into the sky, and the night lights faded, replaced by the sounds of an awakening city. A new day was dawning in New Avalon. /* Eve Tokimatsuri "Kaze no Lullabye" _MegaZone23_ */ --- END PROVING GROUNDS, PART ONE -- In the temple of love Shine like thunder | gryphon@world.std.com In the temple of love Cry like rain | gryphon@hotblack.gweep.net In the temple of love Hear the calling |---------------------------- And the temple of love Is falling down <- The Sisters of Mercy -><-