BGC: Machina non Grata, Chapter 2


	a continuing story by Charles Lewis (clewis@virtu.sar.usf.edu)


Author's foreword:

	I've been really surprised, encouraged and delighted by the 
positive response part one of _Machina_ received.  Please keep those 
letters coming!  Although this is still my first work, I'd be willing to 
suggest that reader response is probably one of the main reasons that so 
many epic fan works actually find their way to completion.
	Anyway, authorial gratitude aside, chapter 2 is something of a 
departure from chapter 1 and will, hopefully, act to set up the 
development of an honest-to-goodness plot in chapters 3+.  Sylia and Nene 
serve as the primary narrative voices, and there is only a brief 
smattering of traditional action at the end (which, incidentally, is a 
terminally odd bit of writing).
	Without further ado, I bid you well -- and hope that you enjoy 
the story.

	CHL, 11/3/95
	clewis@virtu.sar.usf.edu
  
 
********** Begin, Chapter 2

	As a grizzled veteran of the ADPolice, Leon McNichol had thought 
he had seen everything.  There was, in his experience, a spectacular 
diversity of depraved and horrible things man could do to himself, and his 
world.  Rogue boomers, and the path of almost total destruction they left 
through the city, were just the latest extension of the same sort of 
spirit of maudlin innovation that had given humanity gunpowder, nuclear 
fission, bio-engineered killer retroviruses and disposable diapers.  All 
the same, this scene -- the terminus of the latest clash with the realm 
of the cybernetic -- still left Leon, and his squad, standing in speechless 
awe.
	What had once been a stretch of SuperHighway 187 nearly a 
kilometer long, and a surrounding section of decaying strip malls and light 
manufacturing operations, was now a snow-white, almost pristine, powdery 
crater.  The mad 7 AM rush of commuters racing against time, and one 
another, to begin another day molding their asses to chairs, and the 
lethargic bustle of the unemployed scraping for jobs and bargains in 
run-down strip malls was replaced by an eerie, almost pastoral, breeze 
sweeping the talc-like ash gently outward.  The scene, in Leon's opinion, 
didn't show the all-too-familiar char, and sputtering, of a virulent 
insurance fire, or even the staggered stippling of a massive explosion.  
Not even char and debris were left.
	Although the event had taken place a scant two hours before, 
nothing was left burning.  There just wasn't anything even remotely 
flammable left.  The entire area, and whatever had once inhabitated 
it, had been totally, and completely, incinerated.  Had it not been 
for the ever-growing swarm of reporters, and the mass of cops required to 
keep them at bay, it might have even been sort of poetic ... in a sad, 
peaceful sort of way.  Moreover, Leon McNichol wasn't an especially sad, or 
peaceful, kind of guy.
	ADPolice dealt, on a fairly regular basis with suicide bombers 
trying to level buildings, combat boomers trying to maim anything in sight 
and the occasional armed vigilante group.  They did _not_ deal with <barely> 
sub-nuclear tactical blasts.  It just wasn't fair -- this sort of shit was 
just out of their league.  Leon needed a cigarette.
	"Daley," called Leon to his partner, "do we have eyewitnesses?"
	"Sure! All of MegaTokyo, and most of the 'burbs, saw the blast," 
returned Daley Wong, "reports from satellite are actually coming in right now 
... wow..."
	"What do you have?"
	"Some of the thermal signatures are on record," Daley read from the
screen of his palmtop computer "cold paint on limited targets... high
mobility, low-level EM emissions... it looks like the Knight Sabers were
probably involved in this," he shook his head in wonder, "... what it is
they were fighting we don't know.  There were two targets confirmed... 
approximate size and shape of C-60 combat boomers.  We caught no EM
profile on 'em though... we can't confirm whose munitions did all this." 
	They weren't, Leon reflected, quite as outclassed as they had once
been.  Following the particle beam satellite issues of '32, public
awareness of government-run surveillance resources had increased
dramatically.  ADPolice had limited access to USSD intelligence resources. 
Leon had been skeptical, but they had reached a point where they at least
had some idea who was blowing the shit out of them.  They still couldn't
fight back worth a rat's ass with the submilitary crap they were issued,
but it was definite progress.  At some deep, un-admittable, level Leon was
thankful for any help he could get.
	 Leon sighed, picking up his comm unit, "This is Leon ...  call
USSD and have 'em send over some heavy munitions experts."  He _hated_
calling in outside help, and especially hated dealing with USSD.  Despite
what the bureaucrats thought about inter-agency cooperation, the bastards
belonged in space, out of sight and (hopefully) out of mind.  As much as
it galled him, however, he had to admit that this was really out of their
scope.  Bombs were common enough, but this... this was _munitions_.
	Putting down the comm and surveying the pristine crater in front
of him, he said, more or less to himself, "I guess there weren't any
survivors..."
	"Lieutenant," a patrolman yelled, "I think we've found
something..." 

* * * * * 

	The gossamer strains of quiet, gentle, ancient Jazz floated across
the early morning stillness of Sylia Stingray's apartment.  She sat, in an
apparent state of total calm, sipping tea and perusing a freshly-generated
newspaper.  The muted television showed four news networks, each showing
the same scene, while the sun continued to gently warm the room.  As
always, Sylia seemed totally serene -- content to remain utterly
circumspect. 

	Things are not, and will probably never be, as they seem.
  
	Images of fireballs illuminating bloody fragments of hardsuit 
punctuated her thoughts.  The sound of Nene's fearful whimpering, and the 
total silence of Linna's still form, echoed in her head.  Nene had been 
so stricken as to require a sedative.  Priss, sadly, was all too used to 
dealing with such things.  Although she had showered, Sylia still felt as 
if the blood from the triage of Linna, and the unknown man, stained her.  
She felt violated and beaten.  In over four years of action, the Knight 
Sabers had never been so positively _trounced_ in a fight. 
	The hardsuits of both Priss and Nene would be out of action for 
some time, she thought.  Linna's suit was a write-off ... if, Sylia 
reflected coldly, she even survived to wear it again.  She silently 
scolded herself, reminding herself again that Linna's condition had 
stabilized.  She was at Dr. Endo's clinic.  
	Dr. Endo had been a friend of Stingrays for as long as Sylia could 
remember.  She had been there when Sylia's mother had died, and had been 
an invaluable aid in comforting her distraught father.  In retrospect, 
she sometimes wondered whether there had been anything between Dr. Endo 
and her father...
	At this moment, this was all immaterial.  She had done all she
could for Linna.  Dr. Endo ran one of the finest black market doc-shops on
the Pacific Rim, and was one of the only people in the world who Sylia
trusted implicityl.  She more or less knew who at least three of the
Knight Sabers were (Nene had never been injured enough to warrant a visit
to the clinic, while Priss seemed to be a regular), and could be trusted. 
Particularly when aided by Sylia's considerable financial backing, Dr.
Endo was was able to discretely and safely provide the finest medical care
possible.  Linna was in good hands. 

	Though it galled her, all Sylia could do was wait.  

	Dr. Endo had assured her that all possible measures would be taken
to restore the fallen Knight Saber to top form, and that, after all the
necessary emergency reconstructive work, all they could do was wait for
her to regain consciousness.  Nevertheless, Sylia still anxiously awaited
the report of exactly how much damage Linna had sustained, despite her
apparently cool and collected composure.
	In some pyrrhic sense, it had been a victory, she thought.  The
boomers _had_ been destroyed, and their target had been retrieved.  She
had also been forced to incinerate a non-trivial portion of the outer
limits of the city.  The news reports didn't seem to have passed the point
of simply reporting the mysterious appearance of a massive crater in
MegaTokyo.  This, in itself, was impressive.  Even the most insular of
suburban homes had been inundated with reports of rape, murder and
wholesale slaughter.  For an event to confound the news for more than a
half-hour was remarkable.  A month, or so, before a prime minister had
been (messily) asssassinated by a boomer.  Twelve camera angles had
recorded the woman being impaled, and ripped in half.  It had warranted
twenty minutes of intense coverage, and several video artists' multi-media
presentations.  The coverage of this explosion had passed forty minutes,
and no explanation had been forthcoming.
	Various experts were, as usual, positing everything from
mysterious superboomers to military conspiracies to ... and this was
Sylia's personal favorite ... malign extraterrestrial interference.  A
catchall of politicians, and other talking heads, were methodically
denying any knowledge of anything, and promising a full investigation. 
The police had no comment, as tended to be standard practice.  All in all,
Sylia felt a remarkable sense of normalcy from the characteristically
frenetic media bonanza.  There was no word on casualties... 
	The KnightWing had registered no significant life-forms in the
vicinity.  Mackie had checked at the time, as was KnightSaber protocol for
that plan, and Sylia had checked the telemetry readings immediately upon
returning from Dr. Endo's, but there was always a significant (and
sickening) margin of error when using tactical weapons in an urban
environment.  The Knight Sabers, she realized, had just graduated from the
status of a small, but elite, urban commando group to a full-blown
tactical presence.  Although necessary, using the mag-therm device had
showm more of Sylia's hand than was desirable.  Their sanity, and their
survival, was contingent upon retaining a low profile.  Incinerating urban
zones tended to attract attention.
	Lying Dr. Endo's, along with Linna, was Sylia's most perplexing 
concern at the moment: the man they had, more or less, saved from the 
boomers.  She hadn't thought much of him at HOT LEGS, apart from noting 
that he appeared to be studying her.  Aside from probably saving her life 
by knocking her behind cover at the outset of the boomer hit, he really 
didn't seem all that remarkable.  He certainly wasn't adept on a 
motorcycle.  His prowess in combat seemed largely made up of some sort of 
curious berserker reflex -- although, she had to admit, he had also 
effectively managed to save Linna.  Two Knight Sabers saved by one man, 
in one night ... they must be getting soft, she thought.  She giggled 
briefly.  According to Dr. Endo, he stood around a 30% chance of 
recovery.  Even in triage, it had been apparent that he had sustained 
numerous fractures and dislocations, and was suffering from multiple 
sources of internal bleeding ... and possibly some measure of paralysis, 
judging from the severity of injuries to his neck and spine.  
	His belongings, or rather one item among them, seemed somewhat 
more interesting.  He had been carrying several varieties of illegal 
narcotics, some cash, a notepad and some sort of case constructed of 
a precious heavy-metal.  She assumed that the contents of this box were 
the reason for his pursuit by boomers.  Such a case might contain all 
manner of things worthy of immediate retrieval, at all costs.  There was, 
however, a nagging certainty that there was more to it than that ... 
the man did not seem the courier type, at all, and didn't seem like a 
thief, either.  As a rule, GENOM seemed reluctant to hire addicts for 
important tasks, and addicts tended to steer clear of corporate 
interests.  GENOM was certainly one of the only (if not THE only)  
organization with both the audacity and the resources the mobilize 
hardware like that which they had fought.

	<BEEP> <BEEP>

	Shocked from her reverie by the sound of the phone, Sylia 
eagerly reached over and picked up the receiver.  
	"Sylia Stingray," she said in greeting.
	"Sylia?  This is Fumiko Endo," said the caller.
	"Dr. Endo?  Hello.  Thank you for calling --"
	"I have both good and bad news, Sylia."
	"I see," responded Sylia guardedly," continue..."
	"Linna should make a full recovery..."
	Sylia let out an audible sigh of relief.  She would have gladly 
been maimed or killed to spare one of her people.
	"But..." Doctor Endo continued, "her body sustained a 
considerable amount of damage.  I was forced to begin a process of 
limited cybernetic reconstruction..."
	"I see," Sylia said for the second time -- in an equally guarded 
tone. "To what degree were enhancements required for reconstruction?  
What systems were replaced?"
	"A significant portion of the right side of her body was burned 
badly.  A lot of the work was just cosmetics -- skin grafts, and general 
reconstruction.  Additionally, her right femur was basically destroyed, 
along with the entire sciatic nerve complex.  She sustained a fair 
degree of spinal damage, as well.  We were forced to re-engineer and 
augment her CNS, using both nanoids and mechanical methods."
	On her end, Sylia grimaced.  Linna had always seemed to float in 
a sort of divine synchronization with her body.  She had been.. no.. STILL 
WAS a wonderfully fluid and competent dancer.  Damage to her legs, and 
CNS would be, in some ways, the most cruel.  It would take years for her 
to regain the grace she had once so enjoyed.  The technology of medicine 
had improved considerably within Sylia's lifetime, but science still only 
dreamed of creating, and sustaining, the natural sophistication, balance 
and elegance of the truly organic.
	"The components used were the finest Austrian imports, Sylia.  
The technology we used on her will not be seen in the mainstream for five 
years... I think, on balance, she will achieve a remarkable recovery."
	"When will she regain consciousness?" asked Sylia.
	"She has sustained a high degree of trauma, Sylia.  When the 
implantation procedures are complete, which should be in about twenty two 
hours, she could regain consciousness immediately..."
	"Or never.." Sylia continued the sentence bitterly, "What of the 
other one we brought you?"
	"He was in far worse shape.  Extensive damage to all major 
systems.  Sixty percent of his skeletal structure had been damaged, and both 
lungs had to be replaced.  A number of major internal blood vessels, 
including renal arteries, had ruptured.  There was also extensive 
intestinal damage.  To be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure how he's 
even alive.  He's an odd one, Sylia.  We did some brain scans -- no 
damage.  The weird thing is that our readings on him are inconclusive 
... he's had some sort of enhancement done, but we can't pinpoint it.  My 
guess would be some kind of nanobiological alteration, and possibly some 
gene-tech.  I can't really say, though ... Whatever, or whoever, did it, 
did an amazing job of covering it up.  Modifications appear to be largely 
cerebral, although we're picking up anomalies elsewhere.  Apart from the 
combat trauma, the subject appears to have sustained some permanent liver 
and kidney damage from use of various narcotics."
	"I had gathered that much from his belongings," Sylia answered.  
	"Apart from the modifications, he seemed to be another canyon  
waste-case.  Oh, and Sylia ... there's one more thing..."
	"What, Dr. Endo?"
	"We found an amount of an Ichromate doomsday combat drug... probably 
NIGHT in his bloodstream in sufficient quantities to cause 
instantaneous death in a male of his size and age.  Because of 
the enhancements, we can't positively determine whether there has been any 
brain damage.  There appears to be some sort of synchronization/optimization 
routine to his brain-waves.  This is a weird one...How should I proceed?"
	Sighing, Sylia responded "Save him, obviously.  Do everything 
necessary.  I suppose we owe him that much.  Thanks so much, doctor .. I 
really do appreciate this.  We'll be over tonight to visit Linna."
	"Of course, Sylia.  Oh -- while you're at it, could you find me 
medical records on this fellow?  I assumed you didn't want us to put out 
a general call for data -- he was carrying no ID."
	"Very well, I'll try to bring you something tonight.  Goodbye, 
Dr. Endo," said Sylia as she hung up the phone.
	She sank back into her bed in relief.  Linna was going to be OK.  
She didn't even manage to turn off the television, as she succumbed to a 
long-denied wave of exhaustion.

* * * * * * 

	Nene seemed to get stuck with the most boring jobs, and always 
seemed to be left out when it came to important happenings.  That had 
always been the way it was.  Sylia was the leader, and Priss was second 
in command.  Nene was everyone's work horse.  Whenever anyone needed 
something looked up, or even covered up, with ADPolice, she was their 
girl.  When they needed some system cracked, she was their girl.  When it 
came to doing research, she was their girl.  If Priss was the right fist 
of the Knight Sabers, she was the eyes and ears.  All the same, she 
seemed to always be left out of things.  Nobody, not even Sylia, would 
give her a straight answer about Linna's condition.  After waking up from 
a nap on Sylia's couch following the fight, she was handed an assignment 
... to track down the ID of that guy they had retrieved!  
Honestly! Didn't they have anything better to do with her talents?
	Yawning, Nene chided herself for being so crabby.  She was an 
indispensable member of the Knight Sabers.  She knew it, they all knew 
it.  Without her talents, they wouldn't be prepared when they went into a 
fight ... they would be, in a word, blind. 
	In the last fight they _had_ been effectively blind, and Linna had 
paid the price -- in spades.  Nene shuddered as she recalled the feeling 
of terror as the second boomer had appeared, as if from thin air, to 
confront Priss and her.  Her state of the art sensor arrays, and 
next-generatin heuristic DSP algorithms had been superconductive 
ballast.  Then again, she thought, even the KnightWing's sensor arrays had 
failed to detect the second boomer.  All the same, even though the 
technology they had faced had been new, she still felt as thought she should 
have come up with _something_ to deal with the new boomers.  She  
recalled with a shudder the eerie black EM shadow that was the boomer's  
only sensor signature, save the odd generalized energy buildups which 
seemed to precede weaponry discharges... Hmm... she had to remember to 
discuss that with Sylia.  
	Sulking guiltily as she munched on a doughnut borrowed from 
Sylia's kitchen, Nene plopped down at a terminal of the KnightSaber 
mainframe.  The gear was definitely of a higher grade than her own.
There was definitely far more bandwidth and storage available ... but it 
just wasn't the same.  The gear just wasn't as customized as her own.  
Without her unique and subtle modifications of both hardware and 
software, the "activities" just didn't seem to have the same flair.  She 
briefly considered quickly modifying the terminal she was working on but, 
for the hundredth time, immediately banished the thought. Sylia used 
the machine more than Nene did, she owned it, and she liked it as it 
was.  Besides, it was considered bad form to tweak someone else's box.
	She glanced over briefly at the preliminary information Sylia had 
given her: a DNA sample, a retinal scan, a composite facial picture and 
height/weight.  Under normal circumstances, this would have been more 
than sufficient to locate all manner of information about almost anyone.  
Unfortunately, anyone subject to a boomer hit squad probably wasn't 
registered with the DMV.  
	She started with the standard points of information, issuing 
general queries in the public wants and warrants and missing 
persons databases.  A  dozen, or so, hits returned ... no matches.  She 
moved on to the finance ministry, gingerly running queries, deftly 
avoiding security daemons all the way.  The finance guys, she observed, 
seemed unduly worried about security.   	
	Most sysadmins, at least the vast majority who were employed as 
low-grade civil servants, had long ago given up trying to repel the truly 
elite system crackers.  Pissing off the crackers tended to mean ending 
up dead in a payroll computer, or wanted for child molestation by the 
cops.  Maintaining confidentiality was hardly a priority, anyhow.  They 
all snooped through supposedly secure accounts all the time.  Some of 
them sold it for bribes from individuals, or groups, too cheap or stupid 
to hire pro crackers, while others just liked the voyeuristic aspects of 
knowing everything about some facet of a given person's life.  True 
privacy was only possible for people who had the power to violate anyone 
else's.  This was an exclusive group, encompassing those who knew the 
business of cracking and those rich- and connected- enough to hire 
them.  Nene was the former.  The Knight Sabers organization, and Sylia 
Stingray specifically, were the latter.
	The finance ministry database, for all its blustering security code, 
turned up nothing.  Nene squirmed in frustration as the DMV and the 
health and benefits ministries similarly turned up nothing.  It wasn't 
really that uncommon for someone to _not_ be in these systems.  
Something like 15% of the total population of MegaTokyo lived in squats, 
and eked out a living doing things that generally didn't get taxed -- or 
reported.  Unless they showed up with a criminal record, a somewhat more 
involved search, such people tended to remain invisible.
	Nene was growing impatient.  It was time to take the gloves off, 
and get serious.  Further action within the databases of ADPolice would 
require a bit more bureaucratic clout, and a fair share of anonymity.  
During the past few months, great pains had been taken to audit every 
specific sort of database query made.  Apparently some of the MIS 
higher-ups had become worried about the integrity of system security.  
To Nene, this was highly ironic.  She, and a host of others like 
her, had been invading ADPolice databases for years, and laughing about 
it.  In the wake of what administrators had called a system pogrom, and 
crackers had called a running joke, the intrepid had simply latched on to 
the fact that the higher-ups in the department had, with the supposition 
that they were somehow competent, been granted full access to the system.
	Nene assumed the guise of one of her favorite stuffed shirts: deputy 
chief Hank Rice.  Rice, an immigrant from America, was one of the fattest, 
stupidest bureaucrats she had had the displeasure of coming across.  His 
only saving grace was that he was not in Nene's department, and thus, at 
least theoretically, had no real power over her.  He was, apparently, 
involved in something like purchasing... or public relations.  She 
couldn't remember which, offhand.  What mattered, though, was that the 
fat moron had no idea how to turn on a terminal -- let alone log in.  He 
did have DC access, which implied an open door to virtually all available 
law enforcement records.  If any actions she took were traced, they would 
come back to him.  The ignorant bastard would either chalk it up to 
"doing his homework," for fear of revealing his own incompetence, or cry 
foul about computer hackers.  Either way, she had taken enough care in 
establishing the physical link (routing it through seventeen various 
redirection and blind-mask uplink points) to effectively dissociate any 
actions from her, and the organization.  They might know that people 
were making inquiries into the identity of the mystery man, but not WHO, 
or what, was making these inquiries.
	Going for broke, she sent the ret-scans and DNA through every 
military and law enforcement machine she could tap, and even made a brief 
feint at the outer 'bases of several corporations.  It would definitely 
attract attention, but she was willing to bet that her anonymity was more 
than secure.
	"Nene," Sylia called, "it's time to go see Linna."
	A startled Nene jumped in her seat.  Over four hours had passed 
since she began looking.  Shaking her head, and removing her glasses, she 
stretched and turned to Sylia.
	"OK - let me set a few more queries, and then we'll go.  Where's Priss?"
	"We'll pick her up on the way," Sylia said.
	Keying a few more queries, Nene got up and followed Sylia out the 
door.  As they walked toward Sylia's car, Mackie came running up to join 
them.  Normally, they all tried to stay apart in public.  Somehow, however 
irrationally, this was different.
	Nene always liked to ride in Sylia's car.  It was so smooth and 
quiet.  The retro-fashionable gullwing doors were chic, and the real 
leather upholstery was an unheard of luxury.  Nene would have felt 
terribly ostentatious, almost ridiculous, driving a car like this.  
Sylia, on the other hand, looked as if the car had been built _around_ 
her.  Buckling her seatbelt, Nene was pressed gently back into her seat as 
the car accelerated.  Sylia and Mackie both seemed unusually quiet.  The 
normal sibling chatter was replaced by a muted, tense silence.  
	"So, Sylia, do we have any new word on their condition?" Nene 
asked, trying to break the almost painful silence.
	"No, Nene," answered Sylia with an odd, but unmistakable, finality.
	Turning to the window, Nene watched the blur of lights, people 
and other cars that was MegaTokyo.  A barely-clad woman leered out from 
an animated billboard, proclaiming how manly the new years' model of 
Daihatsu would make one feel.  Another, seemingly in competition, had an 
affluent/intelligent looking man showing apparent interest in a woman 
sensible and smart enough to have bought a new Hyundai.  Leaving the 
dueling signs behind, they passed a whole series of exits to one of many 
MegaTokyo shopping malls.  Malls were now, literally, cities within 
cities -- metropoli of retail, their doors invariably open 24 hours a 
day, 7 days a week.  
	Modern convenience meant being able to accrue yet more debt at any  
hour.  Midnight was as good a time to buy useless crap as noon, 
after all.  Consumption was a full-time thing -- it didn't need to sleep.  
Nene liked to shop - it was a pleasant social activity to be shared with 
friends, but it seemed to be almost tantamount to a way of life unto 
itself to many people.  She couldn't imagine visiting a mall more than 
once a week and, recently, hadn't even been shopped that much.  
	Cults had literally formed with the express purpose of ritual 
consumption at shopping malls.  Smart managers set space aside for these 
groups to worship.  She giggled as she pictured the shaven monks, and their 
mandalas encrusted with credit cards and pictures of dead models.  Their 
mantras had been deliberately chosen, and designed, by the honorable 
reverend shaman rDshan fang O'Reilly, founder of the consumption cult, to 
act as background noise ... to sound like musak.  Sylia had made a 
comment about how the shoppies, as they were known, were making 
themselves known in politics.  Somehow, they didn't seem quite as amusing 
since that comment.
	As they moved gradually toward the canyon, the road became 
bumpier.  The malls, and the signs, dwindled.  The bright, shining meccas 
of commerce were replaced by a crumbling, inefficient profusion of 
old-time strip malls.  These were places for hocking cheap goods for too 
much money to people who couldn't afford to travel any further.  It was a 
desperate, disquieting area -- a no man's land between the slums and the 
'burbs.
	Sylia exited the superhighway, having reached its terminus, passing 
onto yet bumpier local roads.  She swerved to avoid a group of dirty 
kids playing with some rubble in the street.  The children had jumped 
from behind a ChristCorp <tm> billboard demanding donations to save 
third world kids.  These kids looked to be in worse shape than those on 
the billboard -- just as dirtier, and probably hungrier, judging from 
their gaunt eyes.  ChristCorp had risen out of the ashes of a number of 
American Christian denominations, and was well known to all, save the 
devoutly gullible, to be a highly corrupt organization of badly dressed 
preachers who sweated a lot, and seemed to confess to sleeping with 
animals periodically.
	The span of twenty kilometers seemed sufficient to pass from glittering 
first- to tarnished third- worlds.  
	Finally, they pulled up to Priss' trailer.  Battered concert 
posters decorated the rusting box.  The wreckage of a half-dozen 
once-shining, now mangled, racing bikes littered the de-facto front 
yard.  Picking their way through the wreckage, they knocked on the door.  
A bit of the doorknob fell off.  Nene wondered why Priss didn't move.  
She could have afforded a modern high-rise apartment, or even a nice home 
out in the 'burbs, from checking.
	"WHAT!?" yelled a rather irate voice.
	A look of distaste passed across Sylia's face as she reached 
down, and turned, the decaying doorknob.  Pulling the door open, they 
stepped inside.  Priss was on her knees working on some part of her bike 
which, incidentally, was in a state of utter disassembly.  She was 
wearing very little -- G-string panties and a very insubstantial, holey, 
cut-off T-Shirt.  Nene blushed slightly, while Mackie's jaw dropped.
	Nene used to find Mackie's constant voyeuristic tendencies 
sort of cute.  As time passed, and they grew up, she had begun to find it 
sort of tiresome ... and even a bit repulsive.  In his capacity as 
logistical support for the KnightSabers, he had seen each of them in 
various states of undress hundreds- if not thousands- of times.  Nene 
had once been very shy and insecure about her body -- no thanks to the 
constant taunting from Priss and Linna.  Over time, she had matured 
enough (or so she'd hoped) to shed such inhibitions.  They were all 
women, and they were all friends.  She just couldn't understand why 
Mackie hadn't simply gotten over it. 
	Priss stood up, and turned around.  Without missing a beat, she 
gave Mackie her best "Fuck Me" leer, while pulling off her shirt, and 
pulling on a bra.  A small trickle of blood flowed from Mackie's nose -- 
a trickle which stood in stark contrast to his pale, almost ghostly white 
face.  As Priss stepped into her motorcycle suit, Nene noticed Sylia 
stifling a small giggle.  With an indignant "hmph!" Priss threw her 
T-Shirt in Mackie's face as she walked by, causing an immediate meltdown 
on the part of the teenager.
	Although she was constantly teased (mostly in good nature) by 
Priss, and she didn't really care for being called a "geek," Nene found 
that she admired Priss the most of all the KnightSabers, and of all her 
friends.  Priss was, in some ways, sort of like a big sister -- to be 
envied, perhaps even mimiced.  Priss seemed so assertive, so comfortable 
with sex and sexuality, and self.  Both Sylia and Priss struck Nene as 
strong women, but only Priss had that sort of tough-assed attitude that 
made the world stand up and take notice.  In her heart of hearts, Nene 
wished she was as bold and assertive as Priss.  These feelings all went 
without saying, however, as Nene would sooner have been flayed alive than 
admit to admiring Priss.
	Leaving Priss' trailer, they continued on their journey.  Priss, 
of course, took the front passenger seat from Nene.  It almost went 
without saying that Priss either drove, or rode shotgun.  Despite his 
occasional bouts with lechery,  Nene really didn't mind sitting in close 
proximity to Mackie.  She had, for a brief time, entertained the <brief> 
thought of a dalliance with Mackie.  That thought had quickly been 
extinguished, however.  Kissing Mackie would be like kissing her own 
brother -- in front of Sylia, who was like an aunt to her. Incest taboos 
were, in Nene's opinion, there for a reason, even though Mackie, 
himself, apparently didn't entirely concur.  
	Dr. Endo's clinic was located on the other side of the canyon.  
This implied one of two routes: either around MegaTokyo proper, passing 
through the 'burbs and re-entering the city on the other side, or fording 
deep into the outer canyon district to find the perpetually under 
construction cross-town expressway.  The former course would take them 
the better part of two hours.  The latter would take around a half an 
hour.  The latter also implied driving through a veritable war zone.
	Things seemed ominously quiet for early evening.  Peering out 
the window, from her safe and comfortable vantage point, she could feel 
a palpable air of tension.  As Sylia's headlights illuminated the area, 
the residents ducked their heads -- some darting behind piles of rubble, 
and dumpsters.  Nene jumped as a car 300 meters ahead was hit with a thrown
projectile, and careened into a group of refuse containers.  The 
driver, and a passenger, hopped out, largely unhurt, each unfurling an 
automatic shotgun.  Without regard to even the possibility of collateral 
casualty, they opened fire into a convenient building, hurling epithets 
all the while.  Sylia accelerated past the scene, continuing smoothly on 
her way.
	After passing over the trans-canyon bridge, a burning building 
loomed near.  Traffic appeared to be moving, however.  As they passed the 
towering inferno, Nene observed a row of some sort of lumps by the 
ghostly light of the fire.  She gasped as she realized that the lumps 
were the charred corpses of the building's former occupants.  Nene could 
have sworn that the charred remains seemed to writhe in the malignant 
crimson light of the fire.  
	Strangely, the corpses seemed to be ignored, in favor of the riot which 
appeared to be brewing.  An unruly, restive mass of people was 
coalescing, much to the dismay of the fifty, or so, police in riot 
gear.  There was a bright flash, as a police cruiser burst into flames, 
and was overturned by the mob.  
	Neither Priss, nor Sylia, seemed particularly concerned.  Riots 
and fires seemed to be a normal night's occurrence in the city.  
	"The fuckers just _refuse_ to try and keep the damned places 
safe," commented Priss to nobody in particular, "they rent these 
goddamned rat traps at insane rates, pack 'em in like sardines and don't 
even install any sort of fire retardant equipment."
	"Weren't they trying to pass code about that a few months ago?" 
asked Sylia.
	"Yeah... But the fuckin' corporates bought out the council.  The 
official line was that regulation was some kind of socialism, that 
somehow they were gonna price all the poor people out of housing.  Yeah, 
right... The greedy sonsabitches would have to drop down to 1000% 
profit...you'd think the goddamned Russians were taking over" she lapsed 
into a stream of epithets under her breath, her knuckles whitening in a 
fist. 
	Sylia remained silent.  Nene could have sworn that her face 
seemed a shade paler than it had earlier.  Mackie seemed basically 
oblivious, content to peruse some materials catalog he had found in the car.
	Passing through a massive subterranean parking garage, the sleek 
Mercedes pulled into an elevator.  The subsonic hum of machinery announced 
their motion.  The world got dark and, after an interminable two minutes, the 
elevator carriage settled gently in a deep sub-basement.
	As they emerged from the car, they were met by a petite, 
handsome, older Asian woman.  Nene was immediately reassured by her warm, 
inviting smile.
	"Hello, Sylia!" she exclaimed, beaming.
	"Hello, Dr. Endo," replied Sylia, engaging in a brief hug.
	"Hi, aunt Fujiko!!" said Mackie, rushing to the doctor's waiting 
embrace.
	Priss warily extended a hand, eyeing Dr. Endo suspiciously, 
inquiring "You're not gonna stick me with anything this time, right?"
	Dr. Endo smiled at Priss, replying "But Priss, I enjoy watching 
you squirm like a spoiled child!  I find it so refreshing to act as a 
pediatrician from time to time..."
	"And who is this?" Dr. Endo continued, turning to Nene.
	"Nene Romanova, meet Dr. Fujiko Endo," said Sylia.
	"Pleased to meet you!" Nene exclaimed as she shook Dr. Endo's hand.
	Nene had heard stories about this place.  To hear Priss tell it, 
this was some sort of neo-medieval S&M torture den.  To Nene, passing 
through for her first time, it looked like a tastefully furnished, if 
slightly cluttered, combination of a tech shop and a doctor's office.  
After a remarkably long passage, they reached the goal of their night's 
journey.
	Quietly walking into a calm, slightly darkened room, Nene felt 
herself inhale sharply as she saw Linna's still form, connected to no few 
than a half-dozen tubes and wires, lying on a bed.  Her fine features 
were swollen and distorted with bruises, and a series of metallic 
exo-frames seemed to be holding half of her body together.  All in all, 
even though she had been warned, Nene found the entire scene shocking and 
disquieting.  Linna certainly didn't seem as if she were just  
sleeping... it seemed much worse.
	Sylia walked over, and sat down quietly.  She took Linna's still
hand, clasping it in her own.  Had she looked, Nene might have noticed
that Priss was even more stricken than she was.  Nene herself, nudged by
Mackie, stiffly moved forward ... eventually clasping Linna's other hand.
	"Can she hear us?" Nene asked Dr. Endo.
	"She's in a coma, Nene.  She might be hearing every word we're 
saying, or she might be hearing nothing at all.  It can only help to talk 
to her, and give you all the support you can.  She might wake up at any 
time... or..."
	Sniffling, Nene began to speak: "Linna, if you can hear me, 
please get well... just wake up.  We miss you and..." she broke down, 
sobbing into Linna's blanket.  The events of the past two days had 
finally caught up with her.  She felt an arm wrap around her shoulder.  
Turning around, she was surprised to find Priss hugging her to her 
chest.  Gratefully, she buried her head in Priss' shoulder, and cried.

* * * * * *

	Sylia quietly watched Priss comfort Nene, with more than a hint of
sadness.  In retrospect, things seemed to have been almost simple up to
this point.  As the Knight Sabers, and residents of MegaTokyo, they had
all lost loved ones and, Sylia reflected, their innocence.  All the same,
at least in the rosy view of retrospection, matters had once seemed so
much clearer.  The worst injuries any of her people had suffered had been
nasty puncture wounds, shrapnel and tarnished armor.  Things had changed. 
Linna, the one Sylia had always privately relied on to remain stable, calm
and consistent, was very nearly dead.  Because of the Knight Sabers,
because of Sylia, she had lost some significant portion of her body.  Were
it not for Dr. Endo, had Linna even survived she would have been severely
crippled or paralyzed.  When she had recruited three girls as covert
soldiers, she had envisioned a tightly disciplined, highly professional
squad.  Some five years later, they were three women ... women who were,
in every way, the closest people to her.  They were like sisters, perhaps
even daughters, to her.  She seriously doubted her own ability to ask them
to sacrifice themselves...she felt herself beginning to tremble, as the
image of Linna's battered, bleeding body lying on the floor of the
KnightWing replayed itself in her head. 

	NO! 
	
	Sylia exerted her utmost will to bring her emotions back under 
control.  These women, she reflected, had always understood the risks 
involved with being a Knight Saber.  Boomers were designed to be as 
lethal as possible, and they were, in essence, designed to kill boomers.  
Death was an occupational hazard -- of life as a Knight Saber and, she 
reflected wryly, of being a denizen of MegaTokyo.  After coming so far, 
and giving up so very much, disbandment would be more cruel than death for 
these women.
	Sylia withdrew from her reverie as she felt a hand on her 
shoulder.  Turning, she followed Dr. Endo back out to the hall, leaving 
Priss and Nene to attend to Linna.
	"Linna is strong, " said Dr. Endo, "I think she'll be fine, Sylia.  
We've confirmed that she sustained no brain damage, and I'm quite confident 
that she will adapt well to her ... enhancements.  She is a 
strong-willed, smart, savvy girl.  She should recover fully."  A 
maternal smile appeared on her warm, wizened face as she embraced 
Sylia.  Sylia gratefully returned the embrace.
	"Now," continued Dr. Endo breaking the embrace, and returning to 
her normal neutral expression, "I believe we have another patient, and 
another issue, to discuss..."
	Sylia nodded, and followed Dr. Endo down the hall, entering a 
room some distance from Linna's.  The room had far more equipment -- some 
of which Sylia recognized immediately, some of which was mystifying.  
Bright, bluish-white light bathed the room, casting an odd, almost 
pretenatural, pallor.  In the center was a horizontal tank, filled with 
some sort of clear, viscous liquid.  Submerged within it was the naked,  
faintly scarred torso of a man.  To Sylia, the scene had an almost 
ghoulish feel, in no small part because of the array of tubes and wires 
emerging from the subject's body.  She was reminded of a gothic horror 
novel she had read as a young girl, a novel whose themes had seemed 
remarkably apt -- at least at the time.  As they approached, Sylia could 
vaguely recognize the cadaver-like form as the man they had rescued.
	"This is one of the oddest ones I've seen, Sylia," interjected 
Dr. Endo, interrupting Sylia's reverie.  
	"He was in bad shape when you brought him in," Dr. Endo 
continued, "To be honest, I didn't think he'd make it this long.  
He was experiencing total renal failure when you brought him in, his 
liver was more or less gone, and the rest of his alimentary canal was in 
rough shape.  One lung was collapsed, while the other was punctured.  We 
counted seventeen major broken bones, including six fractured ribs.  God 
only knows why, but his heart was more or less intact.  Needless to say, 
thanks to the garbage in his sytem, he needed a new spleen and blood 
supply.  For the price of spare parts in this guy, I think you could have 
bought another one of those damned tin cans you kids jump around in."
	"You're probably right, Dr. Endo," replied Sylia mildly, smiling 
slightly at her reference to their hardsuits.  Dr. Endo either had no 
idea how much the suits cost, or had acquired a sense of hyperbole.  
Sylia chuckled to herself -- she could have had an entire synthetic human 
built for the market value of Nene's suit alone.  
	"Oh, there's one more thing, Sylia," Fujiko Endo continued, her 
face becoming more serious.  "Who is this person?"
	"We still haven't located an ID.  Have you finalized the scan of his 
modifications?," answered Sylia.
	"Yes, and no," replied Dr. Endo, an uncharacteristic degree of 
uncertainty coloring her manner.  "He has definitely had some sort of CNS 
augmentation, primarily brain work.  I've seen a lot of brain work, most 
terrible, some good.  They all leave certain telltale signs.  No 
matter how adept the surgeon is, and I have seen the best of them, there 
is _always_  neuronal scarring that shows up under deep HNMR probes."
	"That's where memory fragmentation, and post-procedural jitter 
comes from, right?" asked Sylia.
	"Right.  As much as the doctors, both black- and white- market, 
would you like to believe otherwise, modifications are still surgery, and 
surgery is an invasive process.  You don't just go digging around in 
someone's skull without leaving _some_ sign.  The only pristine skull is, 
to coin a term, a pristine skull."
	"...and you're saying that this man has no signs of any sort of 
modification surgery?  Is it possible that you have a false positive on 
the test for modification?"
	"No.  I checked, and re-confirmed, the results five times -- 
myself.  Look at this chart, Sylia." 
	Dr. Endo indicated a colorful transparent image on a large 
monitor.  From her brief training in encephalonic design, Sylia 
recognized it as a high resolution neuronal scan.  The pattern was, she 
reflected abstractly, well known as the closest thing to a random pattern 
-- barring a count of stray leptons.
	"This is a normal scan -- Linna's actually," Dr. Endo continued,  
"Now look at this one..."
	The scene changed to another map.  Sylia regarded the map for a 
moment, and then gasped.
	"Oh, my..."

* * * * 

	"And I don't want to see you're goddamned ugly face back here 
until you have an ANSWER!!  Twenty good men, and fifteen civilians, dead 
... a goddamned kilometer of outland city landscape ventilated, and more 
fucking boomer rampages?  What the hell are we _paying_ you for, McNichol!?"
	The captain continued his rampage, and Lieutenant Leon McNichol 
continued to ignore him.  Leon had ignored much louder, more 
obnoxious people and, quite frankly, didn't need to be prodded toward 
solving this case.  He had lost friends in this last battle and, perhaps 
equally importantly, he had lost his new bike.  In what was probably the 
only positive point in Leon's day, his beeper went off ... effectively 
silencing the captain.
	
	"Sorry!  Gotta get this!  Bye!" yelled Leon as be bolted out the door.
	
	Looking at the prompt on his pager, Leon quickly grabbed the 
nearest phone.
	"Yeah -- USSD ballistics -- this is McNichol.." he said curtly.  
He didn't like associating with the military, and especially disliked 
USSD.  He didn't want to speak with any of them for too long, for fear of 
the idiocy and incompetence rubbing off.
	"Lt. McNichol, this is Major Enchi, " said the male voice on the 
other end of the line, "we have a preliminary report from the samples 
taken at the scene.  I couldn't believe it... I had to recheck it, 
myself."
	"Out with it, " said Leon impatiently.
	"It's a device that we had thought was only in covert military 
deployment.  It's known as a Helios, and it's about the next best thing 
to a fusion device ... without the fallout.  It basically uses some very 
secret, very untraceable isotopes to effect something approximating a 
cross between a thermite reaction and a fuel-air bomb.  The reaction is, 
and I'm not very clear on this point, contained by a quantum magnetic 
bottling field.  In layman's terms, the device is very precise -- like an 
H-Bomb that only does total damage within a limited area."
	"God... If those are layman's terms, I'd hate to hear the 
experts' shit..," said Leon, "How much are these bombs, anyway, and who 
has 'em?"
	"I'm not really versed in black market operations, but these 
devices are basically new to the planet.  They have been in use for a 
year, or so, in the conflicts on Io and Europa, or so I've been told.  
I can't disclose how much they cost, but I can tell you that they are, 
far and away, the single most expensive munition in the USSD arsenal."
	"There can't be that many of the damned things, then," Leon 
interjected, "can you trace it?"
	"Unfortunately, no.  Our inventories don't show any missing ... 
and the device itself was reduced to monomolecular particulates in the 
blast."
	"One last question, Enchi.  What sort of materials could possibly 
_not_ be annhialated in that blast?"
	"Nothing.  Everything we've seen the device come in contact was 
disintegrated.  Why?  Did you find something?"
	"Nope, just curious" lied Leon, "So nothing ... not even some ummm... 
hypothetical materials could have survived a blast like that?  There's 
no possibility of shielding, or a pocket within the blast?"
	"No, of course not, " Enchi replied in an annoyingly matter-of-fact way,
"the bottling effect I mentioned earlier insures the blast is reflected inward.
 A convectional feedback system is created...." 
	Leon put the phone away from his ear as the Major droned on 
about various largely irrelevant things "...rendering virtually all 
known matter in the space of a tenth of a second.  I can recommend 
some books on the subject, if you're really interested."
	"Maybe some other time, Major... thanks for calling!"  He 
hung up the phone, sat down at his desk, and leaned back in his chair.
	"Daley, " he said to his partner, who was currently staring at a 
computer screen with a slack-jawed expression of boredom on his face, "I 
just talked to USSD.  This is getting weirder and weirder... Let's take 
that thing we found this morning to an... independent lab ... for further 
analysis."
	"Leon ... this isn't good.  Evidence has that thing locked up 
tight..." said Daley Wong, looking up from his keyboard.  "Let's not do 
this... awww shit..." he continued as he got up and followed Leon.  Daley 
often wondered why he, otherwise a mostly cautious cop, was partnered with 
Leon and, perhaps stranger, why he was still alive and on active duty.

* * * * * 

	Nene flounced on Sylia's couch in exhaustion.  After an 
emotionally draining two days, and an especially wrenching four hours, 
Sylia had dragged them back to her place for a meeting of the Knight 
Sabers.  Both Nene and Priss understood how important it was to be 
prepared -- particularly given their reduced numbers, but each still 
wondered if this particular meeting could have waited...
	As the lights dimmed to facilitate the viewing of the previous 
night's combat footage, Nene could feel herself becoming drowsy.  A 
well-placed whack from Priss brought her back immediately, as the 
telemetry summaries and target data began to scroll across the 
projection screen.
	"At present, we are operating under the assumption that the 
boomers we faced last night are an entirely new model," Sylia began, 
"this alone would not be remarkable, save the fact that, according to our 
projections, this boomer is some 48% faster than the C-60.  Firepower 
estimates place it at 167% of previous levels.  As both of you noticed, 
the target demonstrated a highly advanced cognitive target acquisition 
system.  Target modeling simulations suggest that a modified version of the 
Norton-Socha bio-heuristic algorithm may be in place."
	"So, in other words, it's just a bigger, meaner '60, right?  
What's the big deal -- we just need bigger guns, right?" asked Priss 
impatiently.
	"No, that's not correct," Sylia responded with a slight edge to 
her voice.  In some strange way, the fact that Sylia felt free enough to 
openly evidence any sort of annoyance was a sort of flattery to Priss.  
Nevertheless, it was still somewhat annoying to be rebuffed.  Priss 
frowned slightly. "Even restricted to the inaccurate, and inconclusive, 
measurements of speed and firepower, this boomer represents a quantum 
leap in cybernetic technology.  The problem is that it's also smarter.  
Tactically, it showed itself to be leaps and bounds ahead of its 
predecessors.  Judging from the ambush tactic employed by the second one, 
there appears to be a collective, and possibly additive, tactical decision 
making process."
	"What do you mean additive?" asked Priss.
	"After years of observation, and espionage data, we have a very 
good idea of how boomers present themselves to one another," Sylia began, 
"they have to be able to both work as a team, which implies the need to 
share data, and yet also be maintain the status of discrete decision-making 
units."
	"But wasn't Largo capable of controlling other boomers?" asked 
Nene.  Priss shuddered at the mention of his name.
	"Yes, it was, Nene," Sylia answered, "which is why the design of 
boomers has been strictly limited during the past few years.  GENOM 
willingly agreed to never produce a series of boomers with the capacity 
for hierarchical organization.  Boomers either act directly under human 
supervision, or on their own adaptive programming.  There are no command 
boomers."  She paused, letting this sink in while she sipped some tea, 
"Although the details are still quite sketchy, we have some idea of the 
link-level protocols that GENOM has implemented.  Your ECM hardware has 
been designed to interfere with these inter-boomer transmissions, and has 
had a certain limited degree of success.  We still, unfortunately, have no 
idea what the actual mechanics of the protocol are.  We know it to be 
highly adaptive, and encrypted by an algorithm seen nowhere else."
	Nene nodded.  She had spent months trying to make sense of some of 
the background transmissions they had logged during encounters, failing 
utterly to divine any rhyme or reason.  She had privately celebrarated 
when Sylia had managed to confirm that it was new type of encryption, 
apparently rated at class 6 -- well beyond the sort of resources they 
could conveniently lay their hands on.
	"So what is additive about the new systems?" asked Nene.
	"Utilizing a careful synthesis of harmonic signal data acquired from 
satellite, the KnightWing and Nene's detection gear, I was able to 
discern a radically new sort of distributed, highly sympathetic, 
massively complex handshake routine taking place between the boomers.  
It was characterized by strong encryption -- preliminaries indicate class 
7, and radically adaptive signal characteristics.  If ADPolice checks, 
they will probably attribute the entries in the signal table to particle 
weapon discharge, or ambient noise.   We can confirm, however, that there 
was definitely some sort of synergy between the boomers -- a synergy 
unlike any we have observed during the past four years.  Should our 
preliminary findings, and early hypotheses, prove at all correct, these 
boomers may prove to be the greates potential threat from GENOM we have 
encountered."
	"How so?" asked Priss.  Nene was curiously studying the harmonic 
analyses on the screen, while absently chewing on the end of a pen.  
	"It may be too early to speculate, but we have received word of a 
vague rumor about a massively self-scaling collective AI algorithm."
	"Didn't you just say that sort of thing was illegal -- and that GENOM 
actually didn't do it?" asked Nene with more than a small amount of alarm in 
her voice.
	"No, not really Nene.  Hierarchical boomer control has been 
banned.  It just isn't a practical risk to bestow any degree of authority 
upon a boomer.  Their motives -- and they do have motives -- are, when it 
comes down to it, not as clearly understood as most people would like to 
believe.  The organizational and tactical components of these boomers 
aren't organized on a one-to-many basis, but rather the exact opposite.  
The individual boomer is, by some means beyond our comprehension at the 
moment, controlled by the collective cognition of the combat cell.  The 
larger the combat cell, the more sophisticated the analysis and response 
becomes.  Where a group of two, or three, boomers might be capable of 
rudimentary tactics like ambush, larger groups would be capable of 
inspiring acts of sacrifice, high-level strategy and, possibly, even 
other emergent properties..."
	For a long moment, they sat quietly in the dark, staring at the 
looping footage of the boomer Priss and Nene had fought.  Nene was 
mesmerized as Sylia's face was illuminated by the scrolling figures and 
flashes of light from the screen.  For a brief instant, her features 
seemed to vanish, leaving a multi-dimensional nimbus of continually 
information, continually coalescing and fragmenting.
	"There is a bright point, however, " Sylia said.  We have detected a 
weakness in the boomer's ECM systems.  They appear to be using some sort 
of highly intense magnetic dispersion field for both cloaking and 
deflection purposes.  This field appears to have some odd, highly 
distinctive characteristic resonant properties.  Our best guess is that 
these boomers have not been fully developed.  We will be able to modify your 
suit to detect them, Nene -- at least until the boomer's developers come 
up with a solution.  With more data, and the help of an old friend, I 
may be able to nullify the field entirely."
	Nene felt very much relieved.  There was nothing she hated more 
than feeling helpless and blind, and a demonstration of pessimism from 
Sylia seemed to inspire both within her.  Moreover, she had spent her life 
pursuing better, faster and more clever ways of isolating and acquiring 
information. The cloaking systems of these boomers had, in every way, been 
antithetical to these deeply grounded skills and beliefs.
	"Additionally, to sustain these shields appears to highly tax the 
boomer's power generation and storage systems.  One of the most dangerous 
of the new weapons systems is some sort of highly optimized, highly 
focused particle beams.  It was during the discharge of one of these 
beams that we were able to pinpoint both the signature of the fields, and 
the approximate nature of the inter-unit communications."
	"Do we have any sort of confirmation that GENOM built these 
things, Sylia?" asked Nene.
	"No.  We have received no indication of any sort of technological 
developments of the nature observed last night.  Given our knowledge of 
the traditional players, these units are either the product of research 
conducted under conditions of unprecedented security, or we are dealing 
with an entirely unknown- and new- organization."
	"Do we have any idea why they were after that guy, Sylia?" asked Priss.
	"None, really.  We recovered a few items from his person, one of 
which might give us some clue.  We are still waiting back on a report of 
his origins.  Dr. Endo thinks he will regain consciousness within a 
week's time.  At that point, we have some serious issues to deal with.  
He knows Linna's identity, and possibly mine.  It is unclear who he works 
for, if anyone."
	"Why'd we bother saving him, anyway?" asked Priss.
	Sylia sighed, and responded "We were stopping rampaging boomers.  
He saved Linna's life during that fight.  I felt providing him with 
medical attention was the least we could do."
	"Yeah, he's some kind of crazy motherfucker," growled Priss in 
admiration, "he took on a combat boomer with his bare hands.  He's either 
crazy, or monumentally stupid."  It was apparent that, either way, Priss 
approved.  Sylia opted not to mention the subject's substance abuse issues.  
That could wait for another briefing.

* * * * * 

	Nene sat up and yawned lazily as the sun shone through the window 
of her 82nd story apartment.  The sun? OMIGOSH!  In what had become 
almost a routine in and of itself, Nene set about rushing to prepare 
herself for work.  Stuffed animals and reams of paper flew about, as she 
dug clean clothes out of drawers.  Just as she was leaving the apartment, 
she realized that she had forgotten to put on a bra.  Blushing, she 
ducked back in, slamming the door and cursing to herself.
	She wasn't entirely sure why she still rode a scooter.  Before 
she had joined the Knight Sabers, it had seemed both cheap- and cute- a 
combination she couldn't refuse.  She was a fair bit older now, and 
between the raises and promotions she had achieved at work, and her 
"extra-curricular" activities she could have easily afforded a car.  Or 
at least a faster scooter.  She cursed as yet another sports car blew 
past her, almost causing her to fall in its wake.  Just when the highways 
seemed to have become as massive, fast and dangerous as was possible, a 
few key stretches closed down... making the rest of the system yet more 
congested and frenetic.  
	Four years ago, Nene never cursed.  She even felt (just a bit) 
naughty listening to others curse.  A lot of things had changed.  She 
cursed with some frequency now.  She had also stopped doing other people's 
work for them, and had begun to let them know when she felt taken 
advantage of.  While it had seemed abundantly clear to her that this 
could only make her career even more unfulfilling and unpleasant, it had 
somehow both made her days more livable and facilitated a considerable 
amount of career advancement.  She was now the manager of her own little 
corner of ADPolice data management.  She even had three subordinates.  Even 
though she shared space with them, the office they occupied was 
(technically) hers.  It even had a small, highly-prized, window.  
	After a harrowing ride, Nene finally made it to ADPolice HQ.  
Smoothing her skirt, and straightening the <ridiculous> cap on her head, 
she marched through the lobby toward the elevator, every inch the 
professional.  The overall effect was diminished considerably when she 
realized she was sharing an elevator with none other than Deputy Chief 
Hank Rice, the individual whose account and identity she had hijacked 
only a few scant hours before.  Hank was, as always, dressed in a 
painfully cheap and tasteless suit, stained with god-only-knew what sort 
of animal protein.  He stank of bad cologne, which barely masked the odor 
of rotting sweat.  From his overly shiny shoes to his bulging belly, to 
his balding pate, he was thoroughly mediocre.  
	"Good morning!" oh, god... he was talking to Nene.
	"Good morning, sir," she answered, as staid and polite as she 
could manage.
	"How are you today, officer..." he squinted at her badge, 
"Romanova?"  He mispronounced the name -- yet again.
	She nodded, confirming her name, still trying to retain her 
polite smile, wondering when it might occur to him that he, and he alone, 
pronounced her last name incorrectly.
	"I was just heading up for a meeting with the chief.  Taki and I 
go way back, you know, " he said with a vile, malodorous chuckle, "We 
used to play golf all the time with the mayor," Rice explained.  Nene 
obviously didn't give a shit.  All the same, he kept talking.
	"Yep, we were at a meeting of the diet just the other day, and... 
Say -- you seem like a bright young lady.  Would you like to meet some of 
our local leadership some time?  We could meet for drinks and discuss 
politics..."
	Almost like a kind wind of mercy from the gods, the elevator 
reached Nene's floor.  Pushing out quickly, she smiled apologetically at 
the fat, aging bureaucrat and walked briskly away.  UGH!  The thought 
that the fat pig was trying to pick her up was almost enough to cause her 
to become ill.  Nene sincerely felt that Priss would have beaten the 
bastard to a bloody pulp.  She was now officially approaching a bad mood.  

	Fortunately for the world, a Nene Romanova bad mood was more or less 
equivalent to a normal mood for most people.

	Reaching her office space, she yelled out a greeting to her 
people, all of whom where already hard at work, and sat down at her 
cubicle.  Her "weekend," in its blur of boomers and hospitals, had been more 
work than work itself.  Sighing to herself in resignation, she reflected 
upon the fact that a stack of paperwork was about as relaxing as her 
life got nowadays.  Gritting her teeth, she got down to it.
	Like any good hacker, Nene lost what little sense of time she had 
when she got involved in something.  At the moment, she was totally 
involved in tweaking a new search engine which, if it worked, would cut 
her actual paperwork time in half.  There was, she thought, no particular 
reasons her superiors had to know.  Through an intimate knowledge of the 
entire ADPolice information infrastructure, and a sort of ruthless 
pursuit of efficiency, Nene was fully five times more productive than any 
other officer in her department.  Because of this knowledge, she saw the 
advantage in appearing merely twice as productive... making her appear 
quite valuable, while still maintaining a comfortable 60% of her at-work 
time for her own .... pursuits.
	Smiling as she finished compiling the management and retrieval 
code, she spawned a task to accomplish her duties for the day.  Now it 
was time for _real_ work.  Slipping an encrypted optical diskette of the 
information about the mystery man from her breast pocket, Nene carefully 
prodded the resource accounting daemon into securing a bit of low-use, 
medium security storage for a fictitious account she liked to use... 
kmitnick.  She wasn't sure why, but one of her mentors had found the use 
of said handle incredibly funny.  By now, it was force of habit.  She had 
figured it was something like the "KILROY" signs she saw plastered over 
the strange, ancient animated features she used to like to watch... the 
ones about talking rabbits and ducks.
	Much to her dismay, her inquiry into the identity of the mystery man  
last night hadn't yielded very much.  He had appeared in the notes of a 
few narcotics officers, and had been photographed by a few normal-Police 
covert security cameras.  
	Nene was rather proud about finding the subject in the vid-banks.
The normal Police seemed to think that putting up random cameras would, 
somehow, inhibit crime.  They just didn't realize that a significant 
portion of the city could care less about being photographed ... 
committing a crime, or no.  It was understood by all concerned that if 
the normal Police actually tried to arrest even half of the perps they 
photographed, their mortality rates would exceed those of their 
boomer-hunting counterparts in ADPolice.  Utilizing a neat bit of  
mass-image recognition code Sylia had given her some months before, Nene 
had filtered several thousand terabytes of compressed image data -- 
yielding a half dozen shots of a man who was known simply as Greil.  
Since he was barely even a usual suspect, it was unclear if this name was 
a surname, or not.  
	Apart from a fragment of a name, and some approximate allegations 
that he was involved in some light-weight contraband, and the occasional 
spot of narcotics, this Greil person was a wash.  The earliest reports of 
his existence, at least within the context of MegaTokyo law enforcement 
files, dated to early 2034 -- some two years ago.  Before that, it was a 
wash.  That made Nene very suspicious.  
	Some of the inquiries Nene had started the night before were 
large-scale database inquiries.  To perform these inquiries without 
attracting unwelcome attention, she had scheduled the jobs to utilize 
a minimum of CPU and storage.  This tended to make illicit activities 
pass under the scrutiny of sysadmins, but also made things veeery slow.  
As it stood, Hank Rice's account was about to become the recipient of a 
fair amount of highly confidential, perhaps even top-secret, data.  This 
was a problem, Nene thought.  Rice might actually be using his account at 
the moment.  As incompetent as he was, he would notice several hundred 
megabytes of database reports spontaneously cluttering his quota of 
on-line storage.  
	Nene chewed on her lower lip, staring into space, as she 
considered the best way to approach the problem.  She almost drew blood 
as a pair of hands slammed down firmly on her shoulders.  Startled, she 
leapt into the air, spinning around.  Almost as an afterthought, her tea 
spilled all over her paperwork.  The origin of this minor catastrophe 
was, of course, Nene's least favorite pest... Leon McNichol.
	"Leon, I told you NOT to do that.  Look what you did, you 
asshole," Nene exclaimed angrily as she pointed at a pile of soggy forms 
sitting in a puddle of tea.
	"Sorry, Nene-chan," replied Leon -- more than a little taken 
aback by Nene's open expression of anger, "I need a favor... What can you 
find out about the manufacture of multi-resonant magnetically shielded 
processor cores?"
	While Nene normally would have rejected Leon out of hand, she 
could tell from his hushed voice that he was up to something serious.
	"I _might_ help you ... if you're straight with me," she replied.
	"OK ... you heard about that explosion on 187 a couple of days 
ago.  Y'know, the one that leveled a city block?"
	"Yeah, " she answered cautiously.
	"Y'know how the news said there was nothing left, but an empty crater?"
	"Yeah," she answered again.
	"That's not quite true.  We found something... Our lab guys have 
no idea what it is.  It was pretty badly damaged, but the lab guys think 
that the materials and resonance checks make it look like part of a 
boomer.  The only thing is, though, that they've never seen _anything_ 
like it.  I gotta clear this case, Nene... I'm really into it on this 
one.  Can you ummm..." he mimicked a typing action.
	"No promises, Leon... and you owe me." she said carefully, making 
sure to conceal the excitement she was feeling.  Sylia would be very 
pleased, indeed.  If only Leon knew that it was _her_ that was in debt to 
_him_.  She smiled briefly at the irony of it, as she took three data 
disks from him.  
	She stopped him as he turned to leave, and said "...actually, I 
do need a bit of assistance.  Do you know a DC named Hank Rice?"
	"Yeah..." he replied guardedly.  Everyone knew him.  Nobody liked him.
	"A friend of mine banged into his car a few weeks ago.  Could you 
go and try and find out if he even noticed????"
	"Nene..." Leon whined as he walked off in Rice's general direction.
	Instantly, she was back at work.  She kicked Rice off the system, 
figuring that Leon would distract him soon enough to prevent him from 
signing back on.  She grabbed a burst of CPU and I/O time, blasting the 
newly arrived data from Rice's account to the storage space she had 
commandeered earlier.  Just as the resource burst time neared the point 
of system audit, she cut out... the files were here.  
	From the headers, it appeared that her search engine had gotten 
all the way to the outer levels of USSD covert personnel and operations.  
She whistled silently to herself in astonishment -- that was as far as 
one of her automated engines had _ever_ gotten.  USSD orbital datastores 
had security that was almost as good as the heavy corporations, and the 
information tended to, similarly, be almost as interesting.  She had 
penetrated similarly secured stores before, but it had usually been 90% 
luck, rather than any particular demonstration of skill.
	Taking a quick peek at her quarry, she began to read the file of 
the man named Greil.  Immediately, her face turned white.  With a small 
expletive, she killed the display program immediately, and triple-encrypted 
the data file.  

	She had certainly found something.

* * * * 


	Sylia Stingray smiled, and bid yet another customer farewell.  
Despite her periodic neglect, the Silky Doll lingerie shop was doing 
quite well.  Sylia realized that there was a definite irony in the 
incongruity between her daytime and nighttime occupations.  Lingerie was, 
most decidedly, low tech.  Apart from the development of various 
synthetics to simulate silk and leather, undergarments really had not 
changed in almost a century and a half.  Lingerie fashion seemed to 
consist of trends toward increasingly sheer, almost gossamer, 
unmentionables, followed by the rediscovery of the "mystery of the female 
form."  Sylia giggled slightly.  Secretly, she was almost positive that 
it was a sort of subverted tension between manufacturers, who wanted 
to make the flimsiest product possible to keep replacement sales brisk, and 
consumers, who would occasionally become incensed when their rather 
pricey undergarments disintegrated after three or four wearings.  
Corporate aesthetic motivation, in Sylia's experience, seemed to synchronize 
nicely with economic prudence.
	The other KnightSabers seemed to assume that Sylia was becoming, or 
at least would soon become, terribly bored with selling underwear, and 
running a small business.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  
The stability and normalcy, and the comparative lack of threats to one's life,
seemed to elevate the otherwise mundane happenings of Sylia's everyday 
life to the status of some exotic vacation.  
	A terrible burden had been placed on Sylia's shoulders at a very 
early age.  She had joined the elite ranks of research scientists shortly 
after her father's death, in part to achieve the vindication of his 
unjust passing, in part to prove to him- and to herself- that she was 
good enough to be his daughter and, as she was lately coming to admit to 
herself, simply because truly idle time was that which she feared most of 
all.
	The mindless routine of wrapping packages, and greeting 
customers, gently pushed minutes into hours, and hours into an entire 
day.  In response to the increased prosperity of her business, Sylia had 
hired several girls as clerks.  Having employees served both to free up 
time for Sylia, and reinforce the image of the Silky Doll as an entire 
legitimate business.  A storefront only open three times a week seemed 
more than a bit suspicious.  Sylia had realized that having any sort of 
outsider in regular proximity to their headquarters was very risky, but 
the benefits of a more flexible schedule and the presence of a few 
neutral parties to corroborate any necessary alibis seemed to outweigh 
the risks.
	Stretching and yawning, Sylia lazily walked toward the entrance 
to the store.  Flipping a switch, the store's external display ceased to 
indicate that she was open for business.  Just as she was lowering the 
security shutters, and locking the door, Nene came bounding up the 
sidewalk.  She was still wearing her ADPolice uniform, although it was 
especially unkempt -- even for her.  
	"Wait! Wait!  Sylia!!" she yelled.
	Sighing, Sylia opened the door one final time, allowing the 
panting Nene to enter.  The redhead slumped in a convenient chair, trying 
to catch her breath.
	"What was the rush, Nene?  Is something the matter?" asked Sylia 
with a barely perceptible note of concern.
	"You...have to...see this..." Nene managed to get out between 
gasps, "I... ran for three... blocks.  No parking..."
	Sylia sighed.  Silky Doll had its own underground parking, but 
Sylia had reprimanded the others for being easy targets of casual 
surveillance.  Allegedly, they were supposed to be only casual 
acquaintances.  The fact was, however, that Nene spent more than half of 
her time at Sylia's home, and Linna was close behind.  Only Priss seemed 
to heed the security precautions -- and that only because she tended not 
to socialize, and really didn't seem to fancy the goods Sylia peddled.
	"What do you have, Nene?" Sylia asked, eyeing a parcel under her arm.
	Having recovered her breath, Nene replied "I found a cache of 
information about our mystery man."
	"That could have waited, Nene," Sylia stated flatly.
	"I think you'll want to see this ... immediately, Sylia," Nene 
replied firmly.  Sylia raised an eyebrow at the girl's unusually 
assertive behavior.
	"I also have something you will definitely want to see," Nene continued.
	"And what is that?" Sylia answered.
	"A full physical analysis of the remains of a CPU core from one of the 
boomers we fought the other night, courtesy of ADPolice" she responded smugly.
	At this, Sylia's eyes widened. 

* * * * * 

	Nene sat, bemused, on Sylia's couch watching an ancient 2-D 
movie.  It was about some city where a cute cop was hunting down what 
appeared to be sort of wimpy boomers.  It was really a nice _looking_ 
movie, especially given its age (over a half century, Sylia had said).  
The funniest thing about it was that one of the boomer-things was named 
Priss.  Nene didn't think the real Priss would have appreciated the 
thought that she, of all people, had been named after a movie-boomer.  
Then again, this seemed to make it all the funnier.  The movie-Priss' 
hair seemed almost exactly like real-Priss' stage wig.  Somehow, Nene 
also knew that real-Priss would have killed to look like the woman in 
this movie (who was, she had heard, still alive and living in seclusion 
somewhere in South America) -- although Priss would never admit such a 
thing.
	Nene was rather pointedly ignoring her hosts, the Stingray 
siblings.  They had been totally involved in running all sorts of 
simulations and regressive analyses of the ADPolice data she had brought 
them.  The things they were doing were more science than hacking, as 
such.  Nene liked hacking.  She didn't like science.  That was Sylia's 
job.  
	Mackie cursed quietly as yet another program crashed.  It looked 
like he was trying to figure out what kind of shielding could have 
protected the boomer's core from the heat of a sub-nuke mag bottle.   
Sylia was trying to reconstruct exactly what sort of processing the 
artifact had been responsible for.  Preliminary reports had suggested 
that this was both the physical- and computational- core of the boomer.  
Whatever the part had been, it had been ...softened... considerably by 
the blast.  The ADPolice engineers were basically baffled.  Sylia didn't 
appear to be doing much better.  Nene started, and even Mackie stopped 
in surprise, as Sylia muttered an uncharacteristic expletive as yet another 
simulation locked up her compiler.  The air was thick with tension and 
frustration.  Even Nene, who normally tended to be blithely unaware of 
many of the subtleties of situations, felt more than a bit 
uncomfortable.  It was almost a relief when the shrill peal of the 
telephone startled everyone.
	"Hello?" said Sylia, answering the call.
	"Dr. Endo-" she answered after a short pause, "do you have news?"
	"Thank you very much," concluded Sylia as she replaced the 
receiver, and turned to Nene and Mackie.
	"Well?! What's wrong!?" Nene cried, positive something had gone 
wrong with Linna, or the strange man named Greil.
	"Linna has regained consciousness," Sylia responded, as an air of 
tangible relief seemed to relieve the tension of the past hour.  
	The perplexing investigative work forgotten, at least for the 
moment, Nene called Priss as they prepared to leave for the clinic.

* * * * * 

	Darkness seemed to surround him totally, enfolding him in a 
malignant choking miasma of muted terror.  He could feel it envelop him, 
his flesh numbing as it slowly eclipsed the total void that had once 
seemed almost inviting.  After what could have been five minutes, or three 
years, the assimilation was complete.  The darkness was not, however, 
content with simple envelopment.  With a malignant, inhuman ambition it 
began the agonizing, inexorable process of penetration and consumption.  
Every pore of his body was under attack, an open portal to the stygian 
chaos that was without.  He could feel his thoughts begin to falter, 
stopping in mid-stride as his cortex was patiently, deliberately
compromised.  
	He opened his mouth to scream, only to provide the insidious 
chaos yet another avenue to invade his paralyzed carcass.  He felt his 
gag reflex engage, repeatedly, to no avail.  All motion, even that of his 
diaphragm and esophagus, was quelled by the sickening embrace of the 
darkness.  A dim thought passed through his fading consciousness, 
urging him to give in... much as a drowning man accepts the final, cool 
peace of an aquatic death.  Sleep beyond oblivion, his temples stroked by 
the kind, understanding cool fingertips of the hereafter.  The thought 
was appealing...
	Try as he might, however, he was not allowed to succumb.  The 
suchness, the darkness, the morass, refused to let him die.  It existed 
only to keep him, in terror, in a perpetual state of metaphysical 
asphyxiation.  The tears which flowed from his eyes were immediately 
absorbed.  He was trapped -- a dim spark, entombed within the infinitely 
vast sarcophagus of a cosmos of nothingness.  He could feel tendrils of 
the darkness begin to tentatively penetrate the innermost realm of his 
being.  In some sense, this was the most brutal and intimate form of rape 
imaginable -- and yet much, much more.  He could sense a vague, ephemeral 
impression of the things' emotions ... if you could call it that.  What 
he felt was an infinitely malignant contempt, deriving an almost orgasmic 
level of glee from every milligram of abject suffering he endured.  
	A brief, ineffably sweet, sense of hope passed briefly through 
his tortured mind as he saw a dim light.  It was, he thought, a 
reprieve.  He was free.
	What was left of his identity shuddered as he felt the insidious 
mirth of the darkness.  He had been fooled.  Somehow, his spirit sunk yet 
deeper in despair than it had been before.  The suchness had him, and it 
had him totally.  They both knew it.  There was no victory.  It would 
slowly digest him ... his very essence ... for as long as the titillation 
endured.

* * * * * 

	Servos announced their presence with a subtle, silky-smooth hum.  
What might be considered the head of a three meter, crimson humanoid 
battle suit peered upward.  Through the eyes of the battle-mover, he 
surveyed the rise of a dim, coldly bright star from behind a massive 
chunk of ice.  Billions of stars, his own sun included, availed 
themselves of vision stretching from deep infrared to X-Ray.  The music 
of the spheres lay, resplendent, to be viewed, rather than contemplated.  
He, or his machine -- the distinction was unclear, saw all there was to 
see.  Tiny sparks and flashes punctuated the celestial tapestry.
shimmering radiation casting an eerie glow over surrounding asteroids.  
Tens of thousands of people were dying, killing one another to heighten 
a moment of pure aesthetic perfection that no human could ever know -- 
and yet, at some essential level, he _was_ human. 
	This profound paradox lent, rather than detracted, from the 
sickening veracity of it all.  The sublime imperfection of metaphor was 
much of what remained as truly his... the final holdout in the subtle, 
eminently necessary, adversarial relation of cybernetic symbiosis.
	Turning, reluctantly, from the haunting perfection of the 
celestial tapestry, and the remote fleet battle that it contained, he 
returned to work.  Surveying the rocky surface of the asteroid, against 
the backdrop of the swirling poison clouds of the planet far below (or 
was it above?), his sensors... his eyes... noted a half-dozen reflective 
domes, emerging from the rock like gossamer toadstools.  The silvery 
domes were a beautiful counterpoint to the glossy, red rock of the 
asteroid and the inky blackness of space.
	A faint, silent puff of gas signaled the destruction of one of 
the domes.  People lived in those domes, he reflected remotely.  Dogs and 
cats, women and men; even children.  A process spawned, an involuntary 
line of argument and thought following its own primrose path, estimating 
the damage.  Each dome contained a thousand occupants, packed in close 
quarters.  A thousand people were now dead.  Entire families had, in a 
brief moment, ceased to be.  
	Some deep part of him, a part that had long ago lost all contact with 
the outside world... and, perhaps, with sanity itself, cried out.  It 
cried not for the mothers who would never again see their sons, or the 
lives that might have been, but rather for the death within _him_.  The 
extent of his reaction was a vague, fleeting sense of sadness, and a 
wispy feeling of revulsion at his own narcissistic self-involement.  He 
could not even manage tepid anger, let alone righteous rage, as the 
cause of the explosion, a group of renegade D-class doberman security 
boomers came into view.  
	Disposing of these things was a mechanical process.  Jump, land, 
target, fire;  dodge, dodge, parry, strike.  Another gaping menace 
crumbled, its midsection vaporized by a bolt of pure energy.  The 
phosphorescent glow of a small metallic ball, indicating the end of a 
monomolecular tether, arced gracefully.  Another target was destroyed, 
neatly sliced into three pieces -- each piece hurtling off into deep 
space, bound in absolute linearity for its eventual destination.  These 
tin cur, the competent elite of cybernetic enforcement, were carved, and 
melted ... returning to the scrap from whence they had come.  
	Striding forward, guidance jets assisting his progress, he 
approached the decimated dome.  Peering into what had once been a living 
space, the livid face of what had once been a little girl, her face 
locked in a paroxysm of death, leered out at him.  Her face was an unnatural 
shade of blue, her eyes bulging out of their sockets, her tongue protruding 
from her throat.  Purplish stains punctuated her skin, the telltale 
signs of lungs ruptured by the vacuum.  This girl, six years old by the 
estimate of the voices in the back of his head, had choked to death -- 
choked by the vacuum, her own body, and a universe which had no room for 
little girls like her.  The only consolation was that her agony had been 
short-lived.  Unconsciousness had been virtually instantaneous.  Brain 
damage had already begun, and brain death was iminent.
	The remains of what he imagined to be the girl's mother floated by, 
her body posed in an obscenely suggestive, grisly pose.  The woman's 
intestines floated about her, forming a mandala of essential impurity.  
Ignoring a faint, annoying buzzing at the base of his skull, he floated 
further into the ruined settlement.  This had been a mining settlement.
He was in the main residential dome.  He estimated that it had been the 
most populous of the five.
	As conditions on earth had declined, space had become the new 
promised land.  Men and women spent lifetimes slaving to save enough 
money to pay for their children to go to space where, ostensibly, they 
would have the chances their parents never had.  The money usually went 
to corrupt members of the stellar emigration commission, and the children 
ended up even more dissolute and impoverished than their parents.  The 
setting seemed little changed from the pictures of burning shirt-waist 
companies, and collapsed mines so colloquialized in history books.
	As if on cue, dozens more corpses floated by, the fresh, silent remains 
of men and women, children and their pets.  The trappings of a small 
society floated before him, its garbage and its treasures, floated by ... 
soon to become yet another ring of space-junk around the mother planet, 
wending its infinitely repetitive way to the hereafter.
	The same vague sense of sadness passed over him again.  He felt regret, 
but not sorrow, ennui ... but not pain.  The only faint grief he felt was 
for the individual who once might have cried, or gone mad, in final 
remembrance of these people.
	Recovering from his reverie, he turned to the buzzing indicator that 
had been calling for his attention for the past ninety-six seconds.  A 
large, ballistic projectile of some sort was heading for the asteroid he was 
on.  Tracking estimates, from the tactical detection web, indicated that 
the object would collide in seventeen seconds.  Target profiles indicated 
a 5 gigaton hydrogen device, known as a planetbuster.  He hadn't 
signaled the all-clear in time.  Command had assumed that the renegade 
units had taken command.  The decision had been made to liquidate the 
settlement, and all its residents.  
	It would have taken him twenty-two seconds to return to his 
evacuation craft, and another twenty-three to escape the blast area.  His 
death would be the result of a brief moment of respite, spent probing 
the last vestiges of his humanity.  Somehow, that made it all right..

	The sky, and his world, were illuminated on all frequencies.  The 
bizarre, serene patina he had appreciated earlier had come to him... 
growing, encircling him in its eerie brilliance.  The remains of families, 
and worlds, faded gracefully into bright oblivion.

* * * * * 

	The blackness embraced him, invaded him, once again.  The mission 
had been yet another attempt to extract yet another exquisite bit of 
agony.  The nightmarish quality of his own indifference accomplished the 
desired goal ... the suchness absorbed the cold sweat of nightmares, 
physically and figuratively, deriving vile satisfaction from every 
tainted drop.  
	For what he hoped was the last of many times, he wished fervently 
for the icy, certain hand of death to liberate him from this most essential 
of tortures.  

* * * * * 

	He was staring at a bulging, blue vein in his arm.  The blue of
the vessel, and the purple of the surrounding tissue, formed an
interesting, almost captivating, contrast with the crimson strap which
encircled, and constricted, his arm.  The introduction of a silver needle,
and the glow of the material contained in the attached pressurized
auto-syringe, swam in the before his eyes, forming a sick, slightly
off-kilter banner of faint depravity and urgent nothingness, as the
seductively painful narcotic cocktail seeped into his bloodstream.  The
sharp pain of the invading steel struck an odd disharmony against the dull
background ache of a mind and body gone wrong.
	Remote screams echoed in his head, colliding with one another ... 
forming peculiar sonic, and mental, interference patterns. Bemused, he
started to discern a pattern.  A faint voice wondered who was screaming. 
Dimly, he realized that the peculiar noise had its origin in his own
throat.  His body, or whatever was left of it, was announcing its
displeasure at the introduction of yet more venom into his beaten, cracked
arteries and veins.
	Stumbling to his feet, he ripped the band from his arm...  tossing
it, and the spent syringe, away.  Lurching wildly, he made his way down
the corridor.  He was in an alley, between two burned out buildings.  He
was in the canyon.  The canyon, the city, the seething organic whole,
seemed to retreat.  A wash of unpleasant colors, the amalgam of decay,
decline, death and abject poverty, made themselves known in all their
gruesome familiarity.  Thoughts and words, ideas and ideals, spewed forth
as foul liquid from his fetid pit, splashing on the faintly pulsing
sidewalk in front of him.
	He felt alone, terribly alone.  His body was infirm, he could 
almost feel the blood begin to force itself between his pores.  Muscles 
contracted and relaxed within him, forever beyond his control.  Vomit and 
blood, shit and semen seemed to mix.  He was a bag of guts, making his 
way.  There was nobody -- nobody to take care of him, nobody to even 
scrape his guts off the road.  What if he fell, he wondered?  What if he 
broke his face wide open?  The rotting, partially dismembered corpse of a 
dog winked at him, as the thing's entrails lazily performed a peculiar 
sort of dance.  There was a burning numbness which made its way through 
his body.  He was a stranger at home, wandering the streets.  The eternal 
drizzle slid through greasy, unwashed hair.  Every pore of his body felt 
like it was clogged with blood, filth and toxicity.  He could taste 
copper in his mouth.
	Inexplicably, he broke into a run.  He didn't know why he was 
running.  He wasn't even sure _if_ he were running at all.  The grim, 
distorted faces of buildings oozed past him, receding like some cruel 
joke of relativity.  As he ran, the buildings and people became fuzzier.  
The drizzle gave way to a haze turned lurid red by the neon and hate that 
was the city.  Meadows, dungeons and doctor's offices passed by.  He knew 
he was hallucinating.  He knew he was _always_ hallucinating.
	Stopping, he turned and stared into the face of a man waiting by 
a lamp post.  It was a cop, a cop with fangs.  It was a demon ... yet 
another demon.  Grunting in pleasure, it beat him over the head with its 
club.  Again and again, as blood began to form warm rivulets on his face.  
Squinting his eyes shut, he hugged the demon to him...somehow hoping to 
stop it.  Opening his eyes, he realized the demon was a lamp post.  The 
infirmity of the flesh was becoming the infirmity of the mind.  The 
sickness was spreading.
	Forging onward toward some unknown, irrelevant, goal, he met more 
demons.  Some had horns, while others seemed benign.  They all saw into 
him, into his deepest, blackest heart of hearts.  The pain, the paranoia, 
they made him sharp.  He was a wild, hunted animal, hearing nothing but 
the pounding of his own belabored heart.  He would be dead soon... the 
excitement and exhilaration were like nothing he had ever felt.  
	Finally, he reached his goal.  A woman stood there, her face a 
continually changing, amalgam of feminine features, both familiar and not.  
She beckoned him forward, every inch the classical seductress.  She lured 
him, playing to his basest animal instincts.  He felt remote stirrings 
in his loins.  He was, after all, a wild animal... a great cat, in 
fact, poising to strike.  She was the prey, and also the hunter.  He knew 
she would encircle and smother, and yet he had to attack.. to invade... to 
penetrate...to play their parts in a tragic comedy as old as life itself.  
They both had to abuse, and be abused.  
	She beckoned to him, inflaming him further.  As her face coalesced, its 
ever-changing appearance seeming to settle on one face ... the girl-whore 
from HOT LEGS, his lust peaked... She was almost young enough to be his 
daughter, and at some remote level this disgusted him totally, and yet 
she was also as wasted and hopeless as Lucy.  He leapt upon her, pinning 
her to the seething, breathing, hateful pavement.  She grinned at him, 
her sweet face crowned by eyes of adamantine evil.  Her quarry was near.  
They could both smell blood, and it drove them mad.
	Pulling his pants open, she grabbed him cruelly.  Working him into 
position, she drove him into her.  He grunted like a boar as he entered her.  
He was not in control.  This was not the act of consenting adults, or 
even humans.  They were beasts, existing only to fuck.
	Her head exploded, just as it had in the bar.  He was covered, yet 
again, in the brains and guts of another being.  He thrust again.  Beyond 
all redemption, all control, he continued to enter the now decaying corpse.  
Somehow, the malice and rot enraged, and excited, him more.  Each time 
he entered the her, he could feel a bit more of himself die.  The 
revulsion he felt was being tempered into that same familiar remote 
sadness.  This enraged him further.  With a final grunt, he shot his seed 
into the now-rotten corpse, part of him reveling in the gore and death.. 
part of him dying quietly.
	Looking down, he realized that he had been lying on his back. 
There had been no woman.  He had stripped, and spent on himself, yet
another deranged addict in the street.  He began to weep quietly, out of 
shame, revulsion and sick mirth.
	Before his eyes, his defiled and dirty body began to pucker with
rashes and sores.  Like a gory parody of time-lapse photography, his body
consumed itself from within, as if the rot and putrefaction of his soul
were expressing itself in the temporal world. 
	He lay still, yet another pus-ridden bloody mess lying in the 
street ... covered in his own excrement, moaning quietly.  He was alone, 
and wretched.  He was even the scant dignity of death itself.  Tears flowed, 
joining the obscene muck.  He just had to sleep now... 
	Dimly his mind registered that the drug had reached toxic levels.  
He had overdosed.  He was dying... no, already dead, he corrected 
himself.  He closed his eyes, and curled into a fetal ball, falling into 
a deep, grateful sleep.
	
* * * * * 

	Opening his eyes, he stood in the middle of the highway, in front 
of the mechanical monstrosity, yet again.  Its eyes glowed malignantly ... 
for him.  Its rippling hydraulic armature was illuminated by the burning 
wreckage of a racing motorcycle.  The finish on its metallic body seemed 
to shimmer like fresh blood.  He now saw it for what it was: a boomer.  
	He was naked, his body restored.  He was still plastered with shit 
and dirt, but the decay and rot had otherwise receded.  The girl in the 
hardsuit was here, just as before, lying burnt and broken behind him, 
unlucky enough to have to trust her life to a polluted failure.  
	Her armor was gone, decimated by the boomer.  She lay unconscious, a 
large portion of her anatomy scarred and exposed.  The woman of grace, 
the one that had so captivated him at HOT LEGS, lay next to her... she, 
too, was wearing armor ... similar armor.  She was unconscious, as well.
	The boomer seemed to grin at him.  Something about its eyes, its 
manner... it was the suchness, or at least a manifestation of it.  
Cybernetic eyes seemed ready to emerge, to encircle his very being ... 
yet again.
	It strode forward, its various appendages and implements gleaming 
in the darkness.  Closing his eyes, he stepped up to the boomer, hoping to 
delay it ... at least for a few seconds.  Perhaps, he thought wildly, he 
might sacrifice himself to save the women.  The boomer laughed, its harsh 
synthesized voice raking like raw steel across his nerves, and walked 
_through_ him.  Much as he had been in life, he was a useless avatar 
here.  He had to watch, and watch closely, as the boomer perpetrated all 
manner of horrors on these women ... to torture him yet more, to extract 
that last bit from him ... they were dying because of him.  He was 
killing them.
	He saw the boomer begin to, almost gently, caress the woman of 
grace's exquisite armored calf with one hand, while he crushed the leg of 
the other girl mercilessly, impossibly red blood flowing from her cracked, 
wasted armor.  The boomer drew its blood-soaked claw across the other 
woman's armor, tracing some sort of pattern... a triangle.  
	Helpless, and in agony, he watched in morbid fascination as one girl 
was carefully, methodically tortured and destroyed.  She was left barely 
alive... The boomer stopped, and turned to him... leering yet more.  It 
_wanted_ him to know that _he_ was responsible.  He felt, again, the 
vague sadness of humanity lost ... much as he had felt on the asteroid, 
and with the doppleganger-whore.  The boomer knew it.  It loved to feel him 
die inside.
	The boomer stripped the armor off the woman of grace.  He felt himself 
grow excited, and ashamed, at the sight of the woman's body.  The boomer 
seemed encouraged and, in a violation of all decency and sanity, began the 
seemingly inexorable process of violating this pinnacle of grace and 
beauty. 

	Something snapped.

	The haze of drugs and self-doubt cleared, his vision now 
painfully acute.  He felt again -- true revulsion, hate and pain.  The 
technicolor hue of real spirit came back to him, blindsiding him like a 
freight train.  His insubstantial body solidified ... the avatar came to 
be, in all ways, for the first time in years.  He leapt, again, onto the 
back of the boomer.  
	He knew he stood no chance against the boomer.  He also knew that 
he wasn't committing suicide, this time.  He wasn't a martyr... he merely 
placed the goal of the woman of grace's salvation above his own self 
preservation.  
	The boomer emanated a sense of sadistic, derisive amusement, as it 
hacked him apart.  Despite romantic claims to contrary, he felt it be an 
ontological truth that evil had every chance of winning ... especially in 
this case.  The boomer was a machine designed to destroy, to rend, to end 
life ... he was a sack of tissue and blood, the product of millions of 
years of adaptation to the life of a scavenger.  Exotic composite 
materials made short work of him, carving him with an efficiency that 
would have done any serial killer proud.
	In the end, however, the motive of the sacrifice didn't matter.  
He watched, his blood leaving his body in torrents to spill across the 
highway, as the boomer returned to its sadistic, evil work.  His blood, 
and his life, had been spent to buy this woman a few more seconds.  He tried 
to scream but, yet again, his mouth was clogged with blood and gore. 
Mustering all he had to give, he focused what will he had on a single task.  
There was one final, desperate chance...

************   NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! ***********

	
* * * * * * * 

Afterword:
	Well, there we have it -- a, hopefully, deeper understanding of 
things, and a damned weird final 20%.  The characters of Sylia and Nene 
have been developed to a greater degree, and we have the beginnings of a 
plot.  I hope that you enjoyed it.  Chapter three should be out some time 
around the release of Macross+ vol. 4 (second or third week of 
November).

	These things keep getting longer and longer! <argghhh...>

Thanks again for reading,

	CHL
	clewis@virtu.sar.usf.edu