Here's chapter two. Again, C&C - public or private - is very much
desired, so if you have anything to say, let me know... please! :)
(Hey, B. Na - you still around? I was waiting for you to pre-read it
for me, but you never got back to me on it... hope you're still with us.)
Previous chapters can be found at http://www.sofaspud.org
Brian Payne
sofaspud@sofaspud.org
http://www.sofaspud.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Reality War
Chapter Two
As a photojournalist, Gosunkugi had been sent chasing many leads, from
meetings between important businessmen to UFO sightings, from car wrecks to
multiple-murder sites. Eventually, he'd managed to learn to tune out the
blood, the smells, and the cries of the wounded. He just did his job, with
as little fanfare as possible and as professionally as he could. Then, he'd
retire to his apartment and get drunk, and try to forget what he'd seen.
He'd never, ever had to deal with the wounded directly, though. His
ability to tune out his surroundings was taking a heavy beating.
The old woman had pressed him into service, draping one of Shampoo's
arms around his shoulders and taking the other herself, after applying a
tourniquet to the young woman's leg. Her pogoing had been difficult for him
to adjust to, but he had managed to keep up.
They had made an odd sight, on the way back to the Nekohanten. No one
had noticed them, though, which struck Gosunkugi as odd.
Now he was stuck, with no knowledge of what to do. The old woman had
passed out just after they arrived, and Shampoo was still unconscious.
And the old woman was bleeding heavily, which she hadn't been before.
Gosunkugi had just decided to call for help and was in the process of
reaching for the phone when the door burst open and a middle-aged man burst
in, wearing a dark gi and toting a heavy black bag. The man immediately
crossed to the old woman and began ministering to her. He didn't say a
word.
Gosunkugi cleared his throat.
The man ignored him.
He tried again.
"Hot water," the man said, without looking up.
Gosunkugi blinked, then stumbled into the kitchen and filled a glass
with hot water. When he came back out, the man had crossed to Shampoo and
was carefully bandaging her leg. Gosunkugi gave him the water and stepped
back.
It couldn't have been long - maybe ten minutes - but to Gosunkugi it was
an eternity before the man finally sat back and took a deep breath.
"Do I ... know you?" Gosunkugi ventured. Something about the guy seemed
familiar.
The man waved a hand. "Vaguely, at best." He looked up at Gosunkugi,
brows knitted in concentration. "I know some people who need to speak with
you, Hikaru Gosunkugi."
The small office in the back of the convenience store was surprisingly
comfortable. Two leather chairs, a desk, a computer, and a small bookshelf
left very little room to move around, but the way it was laid out, you
didn't notice it. A clock on the wall opposite the door clicked forward
another notch. It was two twenty-seven.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
"So what you're telling me is, my whole world is a lie?"
"That's about the size of it, Mr. Gosunkugi. A lie designed to keep you
ignorant and complacent. They don't want you to learn the truth... but we
do."
Gosunkugi snorted. "Riiiiight. And don't call me 'mister'. Call me
Gos - everybody does."
Jed sighed. Why, he thought, can't I ever deal with one who believes
me? "I can demonstrate it to you, Gos. All you need to do is take this."
He held out his hand, palm up. A largish red pill rested there.
"No way!" Gosunkugi stood up angrily. "I'm not into drugs. I'm
leaving," he said, turning towards the door.
Jed leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and
closing his eyes. "You've felt disconnected your whole life. As though no
one understands you, or cares for you. You've been a loner, a misfit, a
wannabe, a geek. You don't have anybody who you can really call a friend.
You're ignored by people, and those that don't ignore you tend to forget you
easily, or use you for their own ends.
"You've held a belief your whole life, that you were destined for
something special. But it never happened. You've tried everything - even
so-called magic - and none of it worked.
"The girl you think you love is married to another, and doesn't even
know you exist.
"How close am I?"
Gosunkugi gaped at him, all thoughts of leaving forgotten. "But...
but... how?" he sputtered.
Jed looked at him wordlessly, and held out the pill once more.
Gosunkugi eyed it, glanced down at himself, then shuddered. He grabbed
the pill and choked it down in a gulp.
"Come with me, Gos," Jed said, rising from his chair and moving to a
door that hadn't been there a moment before.
Gosunkugi followed somewhat dazedly.
The room they entered looked like a cross between a mad scientists
laboratory and a telephone switching station. Terminals and monitors stood
all over the room, festooned with wires and cables. A lone black chair
rested at the center of the room. It's very plainness was unnerving.
Jed turned to Gosunkugi. "What you are about to see is the real world.
It's a dangerous place, and you'll be weak as a kitten, so once you wake up,
follow our orders and stay out of the way. Understand?"
Gosunkugi looked back blankly. "What do you mean, 'once I wake up'?"
Jed merely indicated the chair. Gosunkugi yelped in surprise as he felt
his shirt being roughly pulled over his head, and off. He spun, and came
face-to-face with a girl about his own age. She was petite, with dark brown
hair and large dark eyes. She grinned at his discomfiture, and he noticed
that her canines seemed unnaturally long and sharp.
Those just *had* to be fake, didn't they?
"Have a seat, Gos. I promise I won't bite."
Gosunkugi whimpered.
"That's Crystal, Gos. Don't mind her; she's harmless," Jed said from
behind one of the terminals, without looking up.
Crystal bared her teeth at Jed and snapped them as if biting, then
smiled as if saying it was true. She turned back to Gosunkugi.
"Only harmless to some, stud," she said, winking. Gosunkugi felt his
face begin to burn with embarrassment, and he started to reach for his
shirt, which Crystal still held lazily in one hand.
"Sorry, Gos, can't do that," Crystal said, whipping the shirt over her
shoulder. Gosunkugi watched it fall.
"But-" he began.
"Exactly!" Crystal exclaimed, forcefully propelling him towards the
chair. "As in, yours, in this chair, right now. Comfy?" she added as his
rear plopped down into the chair.
"Uh..."
"Good! Hold still."
Gosunkugi started as he felt a cuff close around one wrist, then the
other. His ankles were bound a moment later, before he could begin to
struggle.
"Hey! What's going on here?!" he exclaimed, jerking his arms. They
were pinned tight to the chair, and he didn't think he had the strength to
break free.
"Sorry, stud, but we've got to lock you down for a minute. Try to
relax." She smiled at him, fangs flashing. "Just think of it this way,
Gos - you're being tied up by a beautiful, sexy girl."
"Who has an ego the size of this building," Jed chimed in from his
position behind the bank of monitors.
Crystal stuck her tongue out at him.
"Promises, promises," Jed replied unflappedly.
"Let me go!" Gosunkugi finally managed to get out.
"Pickups in place," Crystal chirped as she stuck the last of a series of
electrodes on Gosunkugi's chest.
"Right. Get on the horn to the ship and tell them to be ready for
extraction."
"Yessir, mister boss man, sir."
"LET ME GO!" Gosunkugi roared.
"Got the lock?"
"Working on it."
"LET! ME! mmgrlph!" Gosunkugi said, as Crystal stuffed a gag in his
mouth.
"Can't have you distracting us right now, Gos. It'll all be over soon,
I promise," she whispered with a wink and a smile, then went back to her
station.
Gosunkugi railed helplessly as the pair calmly worked at their
terminals. He had just managed to work his tongue around the gag and lever
it out when he was kicked in the stomach by an unseen foot.
The world turned inside out. He could faintly hear himself screaming in
the background as his vision narrowed to a dark tunnel filled with flashing
lights. Esoteric characters the likes of which he'd only before seen in
voodoo texts crawled through his head, and his ears were assaulted with the
loudest burst of static he'd ever heard.
Then, darkness and silence, so complete he could hear his own heartbeat
as though it were being amplified through concert-quality speakers.
His eyes opened of their own accord - funny, he didn't remember closing
them - and immediately he began to panic. He was suspended in liquid - a
viscous, pinkish fluid that felt slimy and soft at the same time - and
cables connected his body to the walls of the approximately coffin-sized
enclosure. He tried to scream, and couldn't - a large tube was in his
mouth.
He couldn't breathe!
Frantically, Gosunkugi pawed at the tube. It came loose with a
sickening sliding sensation deep in his chest. He sat up, clawing through a
membrane at the top of his coffin without a pause, and took a deep breath of
the air that washed over his face. Then he bent over the side, and, hacking
and coughing, dredged forth a torrent of the pink fluid from his lungs.
Vaguely, he could hear voices. He looked around, wiping the goo out of
his eyes as best he could.
His coffin was one of many, all arranged neatly in rows, vertical and
horizontal, in a metallic hallway that stretched away into the distance and
up at least a hundred feet. Catwalks criss-crossed overhead, but left
plenty of space in between. The floor was metal grating, and below it he
could see masses of cables that slowly pulsed, in time with a dull, resonant
bass thumping that was felt more than heard, sounding almost like a
heartbeat.
Or a million heartbeats, all beating as one...
Standing beside his coffin was a middle-aged man, wearing combat gear
and carrying a deadly-looking rifle. His lean, scarred face glanced down at
Gosunkugi with the look of one who hates their job but is resigned to doing
it anyway, and the safety on his rifle made an ominous click as it was
released.
"Get him out of there. The ship's waiting, and those damn Sentries will
be here any minute."
Voices chorused their agreement, and Gosunkugi felt hands lifting him
up.
Jed was right about the weakness bit, he thought dazedly. He didn't
think he could so much as walk right now.
When they stood him up, the sudden rush of blood to his head was too
much. Gosunkugi passed out.
Benjamin Richards, late of the United States Navy, did not like the
looks of the new 'cruit.
Most people, coming out of the vats, weren't physically fit - at least,
not what he and the others considered fit. They were weak, muscles
atrophied from disuse, lungs scarred by support fluid seepage and the AI's
rough treatment, and incredibly unsteady on their feet. He supposed he
couldn't blame them - after all, they'd never walked before.
This recruit seemed worse off than most. The vatjobs - coppertops, some
of the men called them - tended more towards obesity than not. The AI's
wanted body heat, and people with more mass produced more heat, although
they also consumed more. It was a delicate balance, but the machines had
patience.
This recruit, on the other hand, was thin to the point of emaciation,
and had drooping, bloodshot eyes - a first, for a fresh-popped vatjob, as
far as he knew. No musculature to speak of; mottled patches on the back and
arms that, to his experienced eye, indicated malnutrition; and what looked
like bruises already forming from the rough treatment necessitated by the
extraction op.
It was almost as if the machines had forgotten about him, or had decided
to let him starve to death for some reason, although that was patently
unnecessary - he could have been flushed and recycled at any time.
It was very strange.
His headset clicked twice in his ear, jarring him out of his thoughts,
and the voice of Gator, the team sapper, whispered to him in his
unmistakable Cajun drawl:
"Charges planted, boss. When you wan' dem to go boom, eh?"
"Five minutes, Gator," he replied, then tapped the all-call button on
the side of the headset. "Form up, folks - we're movin' out. Gator, you've
got the rear. I'll take point. Sanchez, Duke, you handle the meat. Move."
Three voices whispered affirmatives back at him, and his team melted out
of the shadows that they'd hidden in while Gator worked his magic. They
moved off through the vats purposefully, ignoring the human figures within.
At the start of the Resistance, just after the AI's had created the
matrix and encapsulated their first batch of humans, teams such as his had
tried to free every person they came across. It didn't work out. Unless
there was a team on the inside, to sever the connection with the AI computer
banks and return the person's mind to their body, freeing them just resulted
in, at best, death, and a drooling vegetable at worst.
Now, they ignored the vats, and blew up the AI machinery wherever they
could. Gator had discovered a central switching station that routed the
power generated by this whole subsection. Blowing that up wouldn't cripple
the AI's, but it was just one more thing for them to deal with, and every
little bit helped.
Unfortunately, it would kill every human in this section as well, unless
the AI's were really on the ball, but that couldn't be helped. Killing them
would be a favor, anyway - nobody wanted to live, trussed up to a machine as
part of a giant living power plant, unable to do anything except dream -
and, at that, only dream what they fed you.
He shuddered.
A whirring noise overhead, accompanied by a faint, high-pitched
electrical whine, caused him and the rest of the team to dive for cover.
Duke and Sanchez had the hardest time of it - their job was to keep the
vatjob alive, and his pale, naked body gleamed in the darkness. They had to
hurry - a naked man couldn't survive long in the sub-zero temperatures that
the AI's maintained in the vat rooms.
Swearing to himself, Richards thumbed the power grudge on his rifle to
maximum output and dropped the sights on the shadowy form flying overhead.
The Sentries were getting tougher, and there was no guarantee that his rifle
could take the bastard down.
The Sentry halted, then dropped like a rock. Just before it hit the
floor, long metal tentacles uncoiled from its back end and cushioned the
landing. It reared back, and Richards could see a priming charge forming at
the tip of its underbelly laser cannon, currently aimed right at the vat
that Duke, Sanchez, and whoever-it-was had taken cover behind.
No way in hell, fucker, he thought, and pulled the trigger. A crimson
beam of fury lanced from the end of his rifle, and the heat backwash brought
sweat to his brow instantly, which froze almost immediately. The beam
splashed across the 'face' of the Sentry, a semi-circle of eight red optics
with a pair of gripper-cutters underneath, rather like a spider's fangs.
Three of the optics flared and burst, and the Sentry screamed - a high,
electronic sound - and turned towards him just as the cannon went off. It
missed, but only by a few inches, and he rolled away from the sudden fire in
the metal flooring. He'd have a nasty burn on his leg, that was for sure.
Another beam struck the Sentry from behind. It screamed again and
collapsed to the floor as it's internal power train was disabled. The
optics remained lit, but it couldn't move, and remained there, spasmodically
twitching and undoubtedly squealing for backup on every radio band it could.
"Move! Move! Move!" Richards barked into his comm, rising and
sprinting for the ramp that they'd blown open to get in, only a few hundred
yards away. More Sentries would be here any second, and their only chance
lay in that ramp and the hovercraft waiting just outside it.
They made it just as the charges blew. Gouts of fire ripped through the
facility as power and coolant lines ruptured and split. Richards and his
crew didn't waste time looking back, and instead threw themselves through
the open rear hatch of the waiting hovercraft. A shapely woman in an
ill-fitting jumpsuit was leaning out the hatch shouting for them to hurry.
And from behind, dodging the explosions with consummate ease, came a flight
of four Sentries, tentacles lashing and curling eagerly as they sought their
human prey.
Richards was the last across the gangway. The door was closing even as
he threw himself through, and he didn't even have time to regain his feet
before he was cruelly smashed against the still-closing hatch by the
g-forces induced by the pilot's rapid takeoff.
The hovercraft - a long, lean, spindly vessel with spitting, buzzing
high-speed rotors jutting out at odd angles - boosted away from the facility
with more speed than it's designers had intended, leaving behind a trail of
charged particles that glowed eerily. The Nighthawk was the primary vessel
of the extraction teams, and sacrificed armor and weaponry for speed and
maneuverability. It showed now, easily outpacing the Sentries and diving
into one of the hundreds of gaping holes that led to the Tokyo Undercity.
In seconds, it was beyond the AI's ability to track, lost in the vast maze
of caverns that humanity now called home.
Jed strode into the Ops center with a look of grim determination. His
eyes swept over the controlled chaos, and stopped at one particular set of
displays.
The Ops center was always busy, with people streaming in from all over
the Tokyo complex. It was a large, circular room, with a central bank of
stations that the Operators used to track and assist teams that were 'in the
field'. Displays on the walls scrolled never-ending streams of characters
that, to those who weren't familiar with them, would appear as random,
useless data.
To Jed, and to others like him, it was as vivid as a hologram.
The particular display he was scrutinizing was crammed with
rapidly-changing information - more so than it's neighbors. His eyes
scanned the blocks of text, and his mind interpreted it effortlessly.
The Matriarch and her heir were safe, for the moment. Dr. Ono Tofu, one
of the few medical personnel that had been Awakened and liason to the
Joketsuzoku, was with them and attending to their injuries.
It had been a shock to the first researchers investigating the original
matrix, that people could actually be physically hurt while inside.
Developed in collusion with one of the first, and the most powerful,
artificial intelligences, it had tapped resources in the mind that had been
theretofore unknown. Direct neuro-connections linked mind and machine in a
reality that was completely indistinguishable from that outside its
environs, and produced something that was more than was intended. The first
researcher to injure himself in an artificial reality survived the
experience - it was only a small cut on the arm - but it proved to the world
that, quite literally, mind was more powerful than matter. His bleeding arm
proved that, as did the startled (and somewhat incoherent, in several cases)
accounts given by witnesses who watched the wound open by itself as it
occurred.
It had never struck any of the researchers as odd that the AI presiding
over the experimental artificial reality system showed not the slightest
hint of surprise when informed that the wound had been real in both
realities. In retrospect, that should have raised warning flags with any
right-minded individual, but the researchers - like scientists everywhere -
were more concerned with the new discovery than with the possible
applications of same.
All of which was irrelevant, now, because the damn AI's were well along
the path towards total domination over the human race.
Jed shook off his ruminations and made his way to the central bank, and
to one console in particular.
"How long?" he asked without preamble of the Operator seated before the
console.
The man replied instantly, "One minute. Tofu's gonna give 'em each a
stimulant just before the call, and we're ready with crash gear as soon as
we've made recovery."
Jed nodded, absorbed in the display. The stimulants were a dangerous
course, but Tofu knew what he was doing. And better to risk the stims than
to wait for an Agent to show up, or try to recover a mind that was
unconscious. Either would be disastrous.
"As soon as the doctor returns, let him know that I need to speak with
him."
"You got it."
Jed turned and left, heading for his office. The report he'd gotten
from Ben Richards just a few minutes prior to his trip to Ops was not
comforting.
"Jed," Ben had said as he toweled off from the showers, "that new 'cruit
has got some problems, and I'm not sure if he's gonna make it."
"Why not?" Jed had replied, puzzled.
"Because the poor boy is nothing but skin and bones, man! Sick as a
dog, and he hasn't even woken up yet. They've got him in the ICU right now,
but I'll tell ya - it don't look good." Ben paused, looking someplace very
far away for a moment. "Just get Tofu on it, 'kay? If that boy's gonna
have a chance, he needs the best."
Now, Jed was wondering just why in hell the AI's hadn't simply flushed
the boy a long time ago. His condition certainly explained his pallid
complexion in the matrix, although the condition of the physical body wasn't
of much import to the mental one.
He sat at his paper-jammed desk and put his head in his hands. All the
stress was really starting to get to him, and the new mysteries that had
cropped up lately were only adding to it. Consider:
One of the Unawakened had defeated an Agent, even though the Agent HAD
to have sensed him coming - he had been connected, after all.
The same man was currently in ICU, with med teams fighting to keep him
alive, apparently because he'd been slowly starving to death for quite some
time... which was patently impossible; the AI's didn't waste their
powerplants. That was what had started the whole damn war to begin with.
One of the Matriarch's men had died at the hands of the Agents... but
the sniper shots had not been from an Agent's weapon. The AI's were crafty,
and ruthless, and determined, but their creations were not flexible. An
Agent couldn't fire a sniper rifle; he wasn't equipped for it. Therefore, a
human had been at the trigger... or a new AI-spawned entity that they had no
information about. Either would be bad news.
One or more of the organizations that was resisting the AI's had a
leak - that much was certain. The Agents were hitting too quick for it to
be otherwise. All he knew was that the Matriarch was looking for the leak,
and was certain it wasn't in her people... although that wouldn't stop him
from investigating them.
Glitches in the matrix, centered somewhere in the Tokyo area, were
wreaking havoc with the local laws of reality. The upshot of this was that
the Agents didn't seem to find it any easier to deal with than his people
did. This was the Matriarchs bailiwick; she claimed to know what was
causing it, but in her typical wise-old-woman way, she refused to divulge
what she knew, and instead merely said, "You will know when it is time."
He really hated that old ghoul sometimes.
His musings were interrupted by the intercom on his desk, informing him
that Doctor Tofu had returned. He acknowledged the call, then stood up.
Time to get at least one of his problems solved.
Dr. Ono Tofu looked up as Jed strode into the post-run debriefing room.
The younger man looked tired and worn out, which he most probably was. If
the rumor mill was to be believed, things had been going steadily downhill
for the resistance lately, and it was Jed's responsibility to turn that
trend around.
Tofu didn't envy him that chore. He knew more than most about the true
state of affairs regarding the human/AI war, mostly due to his position as
liason to the Joketsuzoku, and the reports were not encouraging. Humans
were pulling back all over the globe, running deeper and deeper beneath the
surface as the AI's grew ever stronger. The Tokyo group was faring better
than most, having successfully fought off several incursions so far, and
still capable of launching real-world attacks from time to time.
And the Tokyo success was due to a man younger than himself, who had
been Awakened only a couple of years before. Tofu shook his head, not in
disbelief, but in rueful admiration.
The object of his thoughts drew to a halt before him, and showed a wan
smile. "Glad to see you made it back in one piece, Doctor."
"Commander," Tofu acknowledged, standing up from his seat, "I am very
glad to have made it back."
Jed chuckled a bit at that, then grew somber again. "We just popped the
cork on that Gosunkugi guy - the one you sent my way? - and he's not doing
so good."
Tofu straightened his glasses. "Oh? Well, let's take a look at him,
then."
"He's in the ICU."
Tofu looked startled. "That bad?"
Jed nodded, slowly. "I think you'd better hurry, doc."
Gosunkugi awoke abruptly, nearly wrenching his neck as he sat upright.
The sheets of his hospital bed fell back, and he shivered in the sudden
cold. He looked around in confusion.
He was in a hospital room, and a depressingly typical one at that. It
was small, cramped, and had the usual assortment of outlets, readouts, and
gizmos on the wall above his bed that nurses and doctors always fiddle with.
A digital clock on his nightstand showed him that it was two in the morning,
six days after he took the pictures.
I must have been out for a while, he realized with some shock.
An IV drip stand was set up next to his bed, and his eyes tracked down
the length of the tube and up his arm, to a point just under the bend of his
elbow. The end of the tube had a large metal spike crimped onto it, which
was inserted into the socket on his arm...
What?
Slowly, not believing his eyes, Gosunkugi reached across and poked the
metal plug in his arm with a finger. It moved easily with the flesh of his
arm, and returned to where it had been as soon as he stopped applying
pressure. The plug was a sort of socket, he could tell, and melded with his
skin as if it had every right to be there. He could even feel with it - his
finger had made a sort of brushing sensation as it touched the metal.
Ok, Gosunkugi thought to himself. Obviously that bit with the coffin
and the pink stuff and the tubes and cables wasn't just a bad dream, then.
If that were the case, then that guy - what was his name, Jed? - had been
telling the truth.
It was too much. Gosunkugi shook his head and rubbed his face with both
hands.
This has gotta be just a dream, he thought, and pinched himself.
"Ouch!"
... so much for that idea.
Gosunkugi was nervously fingering the metal plug in his right arm - one
that was mirrored in his left - when he heard the unmistakable click of a
lock.
The door opened, and the man in the dark gi - no longer wearing a dark
gi, he noticed, but instead dressed in a faded gray jumpsuit - stepped in,
followed by the girl from before, Crystal. She flashed him a quick smile
and a wink.
"You're awake! Good," said the man, looking him over with obvious
approval.
"Who... where... what..." Gosunkugi stammered, and finished with a
rather lame, "... huh?"
The man smiled. "Welcome to the real world, Gosunkugi."
"How's he doing?"
"Physically, or mentally?" replied Crystal, turning away from the
monitor currently showing a sleeping Gosunkugi. They were in Jed's office
going over the days' reports.
"Both," Jed said, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes.
He stifled a yawn. He'd been up all night the night before, and there was
only so much caffeine could do.
"Physically, he's recovering nicely, according to Dr. Tofu. Real-world
ops, if that's the way he goes, are out of the question for a couple of
months. Matrix ops, well..." she shrugged. "It's pretty much up to you."
She paused, then continued more quietly: "The Matriarch has expressed an
interest in him, as well."
Jed snorted. "That old bat would." He opened his eyes, blearily
focusing on the large roster tacked on one wall of the ops center. Far too
many of his people were listed as being out of action for his liking - the
agents had been playing hardball lately, and violating the Covenant, to
boot. He shook his head. At this rate, all of his people would be out of
action before the end of the month, and what would happen then?
Forcing himself to pay attention to his assistant, he asked: "How did he
handle it? Hearing about his situation, I mean."
Crystal pursed her lips in thought, then shrugged. "Better than I
expected. No hysterics or anything, but he still seemed a little stunned."
She glanced back at the monitor, then looked at Jed again. "I'd say he's
going to be okay. We'll just have to wait and see."
Jed nodded, yawning for real this time. "Yeah, I guess so. Did his
plugs check out?"
Crystal nodded. "Yep. All active, all working at one-hundred percent.
The doc doesn't think there's going to be an issue with rejection, even
without the drugs."
Jed pushed himself upright, straightening his shirt with a quick tug.
"Okay. Put him on the matrix training list. Set up some testing, find out
what he's good at, that sort of thing. You know the routine." He turned to
his desk and picked up the first thing on his 'In' box, trying to force his
eyes to make sense of the print on the page.
Crystal nodded and started to leave, tossing a "Sure thing," over her
shoulder. She paused with one hand on the door and looked back.
"Hey, Jed?"
Jed looked up from the paperwork in his hands. "Hmm?"
"Get some sleep," she said impishly, tossing him a wink as she closed
the door. Her parting shot sounded muffled from the other side, but he
could still make out the words: "Trust me, you need it!"
"Sleep, yeah, right," he muttered to himself, turning back to the form
he still held. Who had time for sleep?
The form was upside down.
Jed stared for a minute, then chuckled quietly to himself and tossed the
form back onto his desk.
"Maybe sleep isn't such a bad idea after all."
Gosunkugi was awakened the next morning by a deluge of liquid ice.
"WHAA-HAH-HAAH THAT'S COLD!" he yelped, attempting to levitate straight
off his bed and nearly succeeding. As quickly as he could, he untangled the
water-laden bedsheets and rolled off the bed. His feet slipped out from
under him, and he landed on his back with a thump. His pillow slid off the
edge of the bed and landed on his face with a wet splat, adding insult to
injury.
Someone giggled.
Swearing bitterly under his breath, Gosunkugi sat up and peered over the
edge of the bed. And groaned.
Crystal stood by the doorway with a pail dangling from one hand. The
other was covering her mouth as she desperately tried to contain her
laughter.
"And what," Gosunkugi growled, his customary shyness temporarily
overcome by irritation, "was THAT for?"
"Well," she gasped between giggles, "you went back to sleep the first
three times I woke you, so..." She trailed off helplessly.
"How'd you wake me the first times?" he wondered, curiosity overcoming
irritation.
She ticked them off on her fingers. "Hitting the lights, yanking off
the sheets - nice shorts, by the way -"
Gos blushed.
"- and shouting your name in your ear. All after you slept through your
buzzer, too."
"Oh. Um... well, I guess I'm just not used to being woken up like
that... or something."
"It's okay, Gos - if you want to be woken by a bucket of water every
morning, I can arrange it. I just hadn't realized that that was what you
were used to."
Gosunkugi paled. "No! That's not it at all!"
Crystal grinned, and stuck her tongue out at him. "I know." Abruptly
she turned businesslike. "Get up and get dressed, Gos. Meet me in Ops -
there's a map on your dresser - in fifteen minutes." And she was gone.
"What a strange girl," Gosunkugi muttered as he began changing into the
jumpsuit that had been issued to him the day before.
Fifteen minutes later, he crept into Ops. Crystal and another girl he
didn't recognize were waiting for him, and led him through the controlled
chaos to a small anteroom. Two chairs of a type similar to the one that
Crystal had strapped him into before sat there, along with a
multiple-monitor computer station.
"Oh no," he began, before Crystal could even say a word. "You're not
getting me into one of THOSE again. I remember what happened last time!"
"Relax, Gos. I won't force you into one of those chairs," she replied.
"In fact, I'll be in one myself, if it makes you feel any better."
"Well," he began doubtfully.
"Besides, if force is needed, Dee here is much stronger than I am,"
Crystal said with a smile. The other girl just grinned, and cracked her
knuckles. Gosunkugi glanced at her dubiously.
She was short, about five-six, and had an athletic, though petite,
build. She was dressed in the same sort of gray, nondescript jumpsuit that
Gosunkugi himself was wearing. Her blonde hair was long, and hung in a
ponytail through the back of a dusty, well-worn cap with an ATF logo on the
front. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses rested on her face. He noticed with
some surprise that she didn't have plugs in her arms, the way he and
Crystal - and nearly everybody else that he'd seen - did.
All in all, she didn't look terribly strong... but the way Crystal was
smiling at him, and the way Dee was grinning, didn't reassure him any. And
he was well aware of his own (lack of) strength.
"Well," he began again, then cleared his throat. "If you're going, too,
I guess... I mean... oh, hell." Blushing, he sat back in the vacant chair
and tried to relax as Dee shut the clasps over his wrists and ankles, then
did the same to Crystal.
"Just give us the city for now, Dee," said Crystal, and Dee nodded.
"Right!"
Gosunkugi watched, fascinated, as Dee bustled around, tapping keys and
adjusting things behind their chairs, out of his line of vision. He nearly
jumped out of his skin when her voice floated up next to his ear.
"Ready?"
He gulped, and nodded.
"Good!" she said, and placed a hand on his forehead, holding his head
back and keeping it quite still. "Here we go."
Gosunkugi felt a white-hot lance of fire shove its way into his brain
through the plug on the back of his skull. The pain was intense, and the
pleasure was exquisite, both like nothing he'd ever felt before. He both
wanted it to stop and wanted it to forever continue. Faintly, in the
background, he was aware that his body was arching upwards and his mouth was
wide open in a soundless scream, but he was helpless to stop it.
Dee's voice reached his ears as if from far away: "Loading..."
A great roaring filled his mind, and his vision went white, then both
faded away... and the pain/pleasure stopped. He opened his eyes.
He stood on the sidewalk of a busy city street, and as he noticed it,
the sounds reached his ears. The muted rumble of nearby cars, the
higher-pitched buzz of thousands of people speaking, all of it. Wind
rustled his hair and clothing, which was not the same as what he remembered
putting on that morning. Recalling the pain, he reflexively ran a hand over
the back of his head and was surprised to find no plug there.
"Hi, Gos!" chirped a voice at his side.
After Crystal had finished laughing at him, she helped him up from where
he'd fallen when he jumped in surprise at her greeting.
"You've really got to stop being so jumpy, Gos," she said, shaking her
head in amusement.
Gosunkugi merely glared at her.
"Okay," she said, ignoring his look. "Time to start your training.
What do you see around you?"
Gosunkugi blinked at the odd question, then answered slowly, "A city."
Crystal sighed. "Yes, Gos, a city. Now, what are those?" she asked,
indicating the swarming masses that ebbed and flowed around them as though
they were nothing more than statues.
"People," Gosunkugi responded, as if to a slow child.
"Wrong!" Crystal cried. "Those, Gos, are Agents. Each and every one of
them. Or, at least," she amended, "they have the potential to be."
"What do you mean?" he asked, puzzled.
Instead of replying, Crystal raised her head to the sky and called out,
"Now, Dee."
Gosunkugi looked around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He
noticed Crystal looking over his shoulder, and turned around. He had a
brief glimpse of a man in a suit, with shades and a gun, then his vision
flared white and he heard Crystal scream.
Back in the training room, Dee's mouth dropped open and she stared in
shock at her master monitor:
CRITICAL ERROR: SIM-AGENT FAILURE
CAUSE: UNKNOWN
EMERGENCY SYSTEM SHUTDOWN INITIATED
>>> RECOVER PERSONNEL IMMEDIATELY <<<
Panicked, she hit the sequence of buttons that would recover Crystal's
and Gosunkugi's minds from the mini-matrix, then bruised her finger punching
the button that triggered a medical emergency alarm.
Jed Bidwell, Commander of the Tokyo Resistance Movement to some, That
Damn Kid to quite a few, and General Pain In The Ass to all, was not a happy
camper. People took one look at the expression on his face as he stormed
down the hall and hastily leaped out of his way. It was doubtful that he
noticed; all his attention was focused on the fact that he'd just had a
thoroughly impossible situation dumped into his lap, and he had to figure
out some way to deal with it.
Computer systems all over the base were glitching, his assistant and
friend was comatose in the infirmary, and their training system had all but
melted down. All because of their newest recruit.
He was almost beginning to regret recovering the man; he'd been nothing
but a headache so far.
He blew through the open hatch to Ops and shoved his way through the
crowd that was clustered around the central station, where Gopher and Dom -
short for Dirty Old Man, or so he'd always claimed - were working. He knew
he had trouble - the two hottest console jockeys he had never called him
unless it was of utmost importance.
"What's going on, guys?" he asked quietly as he came up behind them.
Gopher swiveled his chair around to face Jed. His face was bright, and
excitement twinkled in his eyes, which nevertheless seemed older than his
meager fifteen years.
"Your pal is invisible!" was his opening remark.
"Not invisible, just undetectable," put in Dom without looking up.
Jed blinked, confused. "Um... come again?"
"He generates a null-signal field that -"
"What Gopher here's tryin' ta say, boss," interrupted Dom, "is that your
boy can't be detected by the agents. They can see him visually, and hear
him, touch him, and so on, but none of the other stuff registers. You know,
their targeting system, the way they sense people around them, that sort of
thing."
"- combined with a delta wave pattern -"
"So what, exactly," Jed said desperately, trying to ignore the
techno-babble that Gopher was spouting, "does that have to do with our
training setup going tits-up?"
Dom shrugged. "We never thought it was possible, so never built in
safeguards against it when we built the Sim-Agent program."
"- that, basically, shorts out the -"
"Gopher, shut up," said Dom and Jed simultaneously.
"What?" he asked innocently.
Jed shook his head, then turned back to Dom. "So our Sim-Agent tried to
lock on him, and couldn't, so crashed and blew up the system?"
Dom nodded, scratching his head. "That's about the size of it."
Jed closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with one hand. He paused as
a thought struck him. "Would plugging him into the matrix have the same
effect?"
"Doubtful, commander. You'd have ta get an agent to lock on him, first,
and that's tough enough - they don't notice him, after all. And from what
we can tell, they're all independent. We don't have the power for that -
ours runs right along with everything else. My guess is, if yer lucky,
you'd fry the agent in question, but do nothin' ta the matrix system itself.
Most likely, nothing would happen - they're intelligent, our program's just
a program." Dom paused for a moment. "He was in it before, wasn't he?"
Jed nodded. "Good point." A short pause. "Great. So, we can blow our
own stuff up with him, but not theirs." He sighed, then turned and started
away. "I'll be in the infirmary if more good news comes up. Get started
building some safeguards into our stuff."
"Roger wilco," chirped Gopher, tossing a salute at the retreating
commander. Dom whapped him on the back of the head.
"Hey!"
"Shut up and get back to work," grumbled the oldster.
"I told you that there was something odd about him, Tofu."
"So you did, Matriarch, but how were we to know about this?" Tofu
whispered back at the wizened old woman.
They were sitting side by side, behind a row of people who were all
craning their necks staring up at the main monitor in Ops - the
nine-foot-wide one. At the central station sat a grizzled old man and a
barely-old-enough-to-shave boy, both talking quietly back and forth while
their hands blurred on their keyboards. The master monitor was scrolling
rapidly through line after line of esoteric code, barely a tenth of which
was understandable to the doctor - and he'd helped develop some of it!
"Now you see why the Joketsuzoku are interested in him. We mean to have
him. You will help, I'm sure?"
"I suppose so, Matriarch, but we cannot compel him, by your laws."
"Yes, the life-debt. I am well aware of my boundaries, Tofu. But
there's compulsion, and then there's compulsion." Her smile was not at all
pleasant, Tofu thought, but he held his peace.