Well, I'm not on the list righ tnow, so please send all comments 
directly to me...

The Starguild Presents:
A Story of Bubblegum Crisis...


Bubblegum Rush: Book One

--+ Chapter 2 +--


BGC Created By: Toshimichi Suzuki

Some Terms Drawn From Every Cyberpunk Writer Alive

Story By: Berk' Watkins

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Things were getting ugly in the GENOM corner of the Interface.
 Kai dove out of the way of a hostile sysop and cut his connection
 before he got himself brain-fried.  "I hate this," he muttered to the
 woman checking his vital signs on a computer linked to him by various
 electrodes. "Your heart rate was really up there for a few moments,"
 Meg pointed out.  She swivelled around to look at her boyfriend. 
 "This is getting way to dangerous.  That was a GENOM sub-contractor
 and you nearly got yourself broiled." The cracker nodded and pulled
 the cable out of the datajack mounted at the base of his skull.  "I
 think that discretion is the better part of valor at this point, Meg.
  I'm going to need your help in building a Tapeworm to go into the
 GENOM mainframe.  It's decidedly visitor-unfriendly in there right
 now..." The Boomer nodded and brought up EMACS. Kai climbed out of
 his elaborate, throne-like Interface rig and sat down in a desk-chair
 next to the screen.  "Time to rig up a social disease that won't go
 away for Our Friend Quincy..." The pair chuckled at the thought and
 got to work.

Megatokyo, Japan

 Kou Takada was sitting right on top of one of the worst moral
 dilemmas of his life as he looked out of the window and out over the
 fog-shrouded waters of Tokyo Bay.  It wasn't easy being a retainer
 for a Triad heiress.  It was even less easy when the Triad in
 question was in the middle of a bloody revenge campaign. He could
 feel the GD-42 behind him, waiting for orders. Tomorrow night he and
 the woman he'd guarded his entire adult life would go out and do
 battle for the Honor of Hou Bang.  Two deaths justified by even more
 death, and for some sick reason he couldn't feel anything about it. 
 It was like being dead inside.  "I hope you understand it's strictly
 business, nothing personal..." he said in the refrain of mobsters
 throughout the ages. His cellphone chimed. "Tiger Claw," he said into
 the receiver. "Dark Tiger," an aged voice replied on the other end of
 the connection.  "How goes preparation?" "Tomorrow night..."  Kou
 swallowed, fighting off the last of his doubt.  It was a time for
 business, not misconception.  "And the Package?" "The Iron Tigers are
 handling that as we speak." "Understood." Kou listened to the phone
 on the other end hang up and waited several seconds before hanging up
 on his end and putting the phone away.  Tomorrow night the woman he
 cared more about than anything else in his mortal existence would be
 changed forever.  What did his father say when his cousin Kai had
 come to live with them?  `We do what we can to hold onto innocence,
 but there comes a time when fate demands we put it aside.'  Sometimes
 children grew up fast in the Triad.  He'd already been training for
 two years to become Hou Bang's next Spymaster.  Kai had just stepped
 onto the road that would turn him into Hou Bang's best cracker. He
 smiled at the memory of the new look Kai was sporting.  Kai was still
 the socially inept, sometimes moody cracker he had always been.  But
 there was something else about him now...  Kai had something to live
 for, something that gave him a defiance he'd lacked before.  He'd
 been worried about his cousin, fearing he may decide to sacrifice
 himself one day for some trivial bit of data.  The cracker had
 something to fight like a tiger for...  He had someone to go home to.
 Kou squelched that line of thought with extreme prejudice.  Down that
 path lay madness, and impossibility.  He was Hou Bang's Spymaster,
 not a potential suitor for the Heiress. "Go over those systems again
 before we go out tomorrow.  I don't want that infernal machine
 breaking down with a BU-55C bearing down on us.  The Heiress will be
 in that thing!" he commanded. Workers scrambled to comply with his
 demands.

The Next Morning
Los Angeles, California

 Kai Stuart peered at his reflection in an inactive computer monitor
 and marveled at just how crummy he could look after no sleep for 48
 solid hours.  "Tapeworm?" he asked Meg. Meg peered at the code
 through eyes as bloodshot as his.  "Code looks good," she said
 tiredly.  "Can't really tell as long as the screen stays out of focus
 though."  She rubbed at her eyes and blinked them several times.
 "Compile.  Send.  Sleep," Kai said as his head began to head for the
 desk. Meg complied and had just managed to send the program off
 before she slumped in her chair and drifted off too, her chin rested
 on her propped-up hands. Soft snores in two different keys echoed in
 the databank room as everyone else's days at the Chang Corporation
 home offices began.

 The Tapeworm disguised itself as a standard communication between the
 two megacorporations and infiltrated GENOM's mainframe as it was
 designed to.  It happily burrowed through files, like the demented
 little techno-bookworm it resembled so much in the Interface.  It
 copied pertinent information and lurked off into the electronic
 background until it could send itself out of the GENOM system and
 back home.

 "It's time to wake up, Meg.." a woman said softly, shaking the
 younger woman's shoulder. Meg muttered something and shifted forward
 so that her head was resting on her folded arms.  The shock of the
 shift also woke her up moments later.  "Bwa?" she asked tiredly.
 "It's lunch time, Meg," "G'mornin', `Mom'..." The secretary chuckled
 and shook her head.  "I figure you probably wanted to eat something
 besides Twinkies."  She glanced at the neat, but large, stack of
 paper coffee cups next to Kai and sighed.  "And I'm sure he needs
 more than just coffee."

[plenty more]