Boredom can impose upon one the most extraordinary abilities.  I finally
decided to dig Blue Lightning out of the closet and have a hack at it
again.  Here's the new prologue for it.  I rewrote it in third person;
first person just wasn't working.

For those of you who haven't read it before, this is an animeish self-
insertion sci-fi fic I'm writing/stalling on.

Comments naturally appreciated.

-----

			Blue Lightning, Prologue
			(C) 1995 By Damon Casale

The year is 2008.  Overcrowding, a totalitarian government, and 
vicious, constantly infighting intelligence agencies plague the world, 
man's prison.  Life is, literally, hell.

	It had taken me most of my life to create just one chance to 
leave it all behind.  Now it's only a matter of time...


	Reminiscing was a pleasure Damon often indulged in.  That was 
to say, if you considered his memories and experiences pleasurable on 
the whole, then reminiscing was a pleasure.  However much he might wish 
otherwise, though, most of those memories were anything but pleasurable.
Up until very recently he'd never given much thought to a diary or 
journal, but given his present bedridden condition, it didn't seem at 
all a bad idea.  Writing some of his scattered thoughts down might 
actually help him cope, the doctor had said.  John was always that 
irritatingly practical.  Well, John was always that irritating, but 
Damon wasn't about to dwell on that in particular.
	"They say the best place to begin is at the beginning," he
thought to himself.  "But what do they know?"

	"I look back on what I wrote only five years ago, and wonder at 
how simple things seemed then."

	After another minute of staring at the scrap of paper, he 
scribbled out the sentence.  "Too depressing.  I'm depressed enough."
Five years ago.  Had it only been five years?

	"Five years ago, I left earth, left home," he wrote.  He 
stopped again.  "What home?" he thought to himself wearily.
	"My adventures, if you could call them that, began quite a few 
years before then," he continued.  "If by some miracle you had managed 
to find some hole deep enough to hide from the rest of the world, then 
the `history lesson' I'm about to relate might come as some surprise.  
Most likely, it won't."

	He was rambling, but at least he was getting somewhere.

	"The 1990's were important for a number of reasons.  By the 
turn of the century, there was already plenty of evidence that something 
was seriously wrong.  Economic crises, optimistically referred to as 
`recoveries', peppered the decade.  Foreign `aid' and other blunders had 
drained the coffers of the only remaining superpower, and people 
generally tried to ignore it all and just eke out a living."
	"It only grew worse during the first decade of the twenty first 
century, when the world councils were formed from the dying nations to 
combat the evils, and given unthinkable amounts of power to do so.  The 
remaining intelligence agencies sold themselves out in short order, 
turning either mercenary, or working for some faction or another left 
over from the power struggle."

	He paused again.  "F-five years ago," he mumbled to himself.  
Speech was still slow and difficult.  When they'd captured him again.
	He forced himself to stop thinking about it, turning his 
thoughts instead toward the one thing in all of the universe he had to 
look forward to.

	"Five years ago, I left earth.  On that very day, someone died.  
Since she is on the whole the main reason for my tale, as it were, I'll 
begin then."
	"There were thirteen of us who knew about the Blue Lightning 
project, all told, myself included.  The work on my ship had finally 
been completed, and it was ready to launch.  I had been careful enough 
to avoid being discovered by the various intelligence agencies, or so I 
thought."

	Damon stopped writing, flashing a sad smile as he remembered 
Steve going over the roster of personnel he'd first selected to crew the 
ship.  Steve, paranoid as he always was, had raised hell and fury, and 
refused to allow anyone to be `indoctrinated', as he termed it, without 
being personally screened by him.  One can never be too careful, he 
always said.  Given his usual dress, mostly black leather with a gun and 
several knives tucked into odd places about his person, it wasn't very 
surprising.
	Damon himself was nearly as much of an eccentric, and he knew 
that.  A scientist, an inventor, the CEO of a major R&D company at 
30...all because of an accidental discovery while only in college.  A 
discovery he should never have made, the intelligence agencies did their 
level best to impress upon him time and again.
	He didn't look all that impressive, he thought.  Average 
height, slender, a touch of gray streaking through the brown piano wire 
on his head, and a timeworn smile.  The smile was only a recent 
addition.
	Damon was a pacifist, and Steve hated that.  Steve took defense 
of self and property seriously, and so his job was both that of 
bodyguard and ship's security.  Well trained in several styles of 
martial arts, and a connoisseur of anything from a semi-auto to a rifle, 
he'd had many occasions to put his talents to use.  Too many for Damon's 
liking, but it was a necessary evil.  As if evil were somehow necessary.
	The door chirped.  A moment later, John walked into the 
infirmary.  What he lacked in height he made up for in presence, and his 
expression, while one of wry amusement, was unusual.
	"Don't get too comfortable," he began.  "I still want to run 
another scan."  Then, when Damon tried to croak back a reply, "Save it 
for the class.  You'll have at least three months to learn how to bark 
orders again."
	He watched as John prodded at one of the armatures over his 
medbed.  John had a light complexion, sandy brown hair and blue eyes.  
His face was more suited to a friendly smile than a gruff frown, but 
John was in the habit of being as acidic as he could get away with.  
Damon had almost gotten used to it.
	A prick in the arm brought him back to reality.  "I don't want 
you fidgeting, so you're taking a nap."  John dropped the injector onto 
a nearby table.
	"When...is Kerin..." he managed to gasp out, as a wave of
dizziness hit him.
	"She'll come when she's ready.  She's got about as much to sort 
out as you do.  Now shut up and go to sleep."
	He did.

Damon Casale, scyth@miis.edu / scyth@andrew.cmu.edu
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^