Bubblegum Crisis 2040 and all the characters from that series
are property of all the folks who originally thought them up
(that or some big corporate machine that bought the rights). Anyhow,
this is a work of fan fiction, so don't try to make a buck of this
somehow. Doing so would be bad karma, to say the least.
This fan fiction is based off the new BGC2040 series, which is a great
deal more gritty and violent than the orginal BGC2033. Also, there
is no connection between the two anime storylines, even though the
character names are the same.
My apologies if there is a format problem with the text transer to the
email program. Other fan fiction I've done, including Tenchi and AMG!
stories
can be found at:
members.xoom.com/mmcavoy/
Comments and Criticisms Welcome!
email to mmcavoy@ejourney.com
Bubblegum Crisis 2040
Synth Dream
Part 1
A fanfiction by Michael McAvoy
There was a rattling bang as the heavy metal doors swung
outward to the street. Erupting from within, a loud cascade of
background noise and screaming music, the kind that caused parents to
worry about their children at night. A dazzling flood of light
accompanied a wobbly and panicked figure through the doors past a
pair of menacing looking doormen. Somewhat short and sweating
profusely, the young man shoved his way past hopeful patrons, who
were lined up outside the nightclub. Almost coughing with agitation,
he finally broke free into the neon lit dark of the street. Several
ugly
comments from those waiting outside the club followed him.
"Crazy bastard," one of the bouncers muttered with a pissed
off look, shutting the heavy doors again much to the disappointment of
the crowd.
"Yeah, wonder what's under his skin?" replied the second.
"Dunno," his partner replied. "Just as long - eh?!"
Without warning the heavy doors swung open again, this time
much harder. The first bouncer was pushed back into one of the
handrails solidly, grunting as they went into his ribs. A slender
looking
man and woman emerged from the mayhem of the nightclub. Both
were dressed in expensive clothes of the `business casual' variety.
"Hey watch what you're doing," the second bouncer
threatened, taking a step towards the pair. He was significantly larger
than the couple put together.
"Which way?" the well-dressed woman asked quietly,
scanning the crowd.
The first bouncer pushed himself off the railing. "Hey, you
stupid assholes! I think you cracked one of my ---ergh!"
Without emotion, the woman's companion grabbed the
bouncer by the next easily and lifted him off the ground. There were
gurgling noises as a pair of feet kicked wildly in the air. The crowd
as
one mass moved back, several gasps of alarm heard.
The first bouncer's partner moved to come to the aid of his
coworker, but quickly found the woman's small fist driven into his gut
with a sickly thud. The large fellow lost consciousness instantly,
sailing down the steps and crashing into several now frightened people.
"I will ask again," repeated the well-dressed man with deadly
calm. "Which way did that man just go?"
By now, the first bouncer was beginning to turn blue from the
grasp around his neck. Motioning weakly with his eyes and a hand up
the street, he croaked a few times. Quite abruptly, he was dropped to
the hard of the concrete and metal floor, where he lay twitching and
heaving for breath.
Without a word, the man and woman sprung from the front of
the nightclub. Sailing over the now terrified and mostly fleeing
clubbers, the pair landed right near where the neon light of the club
faded into darkness. Their figures disappeared rapidly, only to
reappear in other neon lights further up the crowded street. Loud
protests and cries echoed from the direction they headed.
* * *
Stumbling through Sodo Ward, the pleasure district of
Megalocity, the young man sucked air in raspy breaths, ramming into
people on the packed street. Drenched in sweat and his eyes bulging,
he clutched desperately at a pocket in his jacket every few moments.
Finally running into someone a lot larger than himself, the young man
was pushed aside into a large metal box.
"Moron!" the big fellow who had pushed him yelled, turning
away with his girlfriend. The rest of the crowd moved on in both
directions without much notice.
The man leaned against the metal box in pain. Trying to
move, he found that his limbs were not responding very well. Raising
his hands before him, the fellow looked at his trembling limbs. His
hands were beginning to clench and tense like grasping claws.
"Oh, d-damn it!" he almost moaned. "Not now, not now!"
Sweat now running down his forehead, the man looked around
bleakly. His eyes fell on the large metal box he was leaning against.
A
moment passed as a desperate idea came suddenly. Pulling himself up
straight, he wobbly turned around to face the box. It was covered with
lots of professional looking logos.
"M-mail service," the man said shakily.
A panel on the box came to life with a pleasing little jingle.
Menu options appeared.
"Welcome to the Tokyo Automated Mail Service," a cheerful
digitized voice announced. "Please insert a credit or debit card."
Reaching back for his wallet, trembling fingers fumbled for
the appropriate card. Clawing for his credit card, several other pieces
of rectangular plastic fell to the pavement. Forcing his hands to work,
he rammed the card into the machine and punched in a pin number.
There would not be much time before his pursuers discovered him
again.
Or the withdrawal put him into a coma.
The mailbox chewed on his card for three seconds. It was an
excruciating length of time.
"Card accepted," the machine said pleasantly. "Please select
the type of mail you would like to send. Voice, video, package-"
Reaching into his pocket, the fellow selected the package
option.
"Please place the item you wish to deliver in the receptacle
below the screen. Please be aware this Mail Service station is unable
to
process any item larger -"
Skipping past the box's warnings, he fished out a small item
no larger than the palm of his hand. It flashed in the lamp light
overhead. Placing it in the receptacle, the box quickly pulled it
inside
itself and whirred a few times.
"You item is being automatically packed," continued the box.
"Please enter the destination address."
The young man spent several more moments before the
mailbox before finally stumbling away. There was an ejecting noise
and an annoying beep as the machine politely informed no one in
particular that the credit card was still there. It took next to no
time
whatsoever before a passing young opportunist slid up to the mailbox.
Stealing a brief look in both directions, a shady looking youth reached
out and swiped the card, disappearing into the crowd nervously.
The hoodlum was completely unnoticed as two figures in
expensive clothes raced by with an unnatural grace.
* * *
He was done, and he knew it.
Maybe if he had been at home or close to a hospital, things
might have been better, but not now. Having stumbled down a back
alleyway minutes earlier, the young man had begun convulsing with
spasms. Contorting horribly, he had bent over like his spine was ready
to break in two. Instead, he merely collapsed into the gutter,
twitching,
with his fingers locked outwards.
There were many unpleasant waste products he was now lying
in, human and otherwise. Stench rising from the gutter, he was soon
beyond care as the withdrawal symptoms took him further from reality
and closer to coma. As he lay there shaking in the filth, a pair of
shadows moved over him, rising from the ugly glow of the gaudy lit
streets. The well-dressed couple appeared on either side of him,
apparently not winded by their exhaustive search. Looking at his
companion, the man then casually bent down.
Putting a hand around the now unconscious young man's
head, the figure squeezed. A crunching and grinding sound was
accompanied a tiny whimper, then nothing.
* * *
In one of the many towers that pierced the night sky above
Megalocity, a penthouse office sat atop the tallest. Looking out over
the rest of the city, the resident of the Genom office stared down on
the
twinkling star light of the civilization below. It was cold out, and
the
wind blew harshly, but not a stir or vibration made its way through the
polymer windows.
Mid-forties perhaps, and well dressed as suited a man of his
station. A trim beard on an angular chin, he sported an expensive suit,
but not too expensive. Similarly adorned was his office. Well
decorated and sophisticated, yet not lavish. Opulence was a frequent
mistake of many men who aspired greatness or power. It was a chain
that weighed down the unwary.
"It's supposed to be near the holiday season down there," the
man said quietly. "Festive, I should suppose."
Behind the owner of the office, across a solid cherry desk or
considerable size, an apprehensive looking woman stood with her
hands clasped before her.
"Yes, Mr. Jarvis," she replied, demurely.
"Do you know why they are festive, Ms. Takagi?" Jarvis
asked with a particular air of disinterest. "It is because Genom has
created a world for them to be happy in."
"Yes, Mr. Jarvis," Takagi agreed again.
Jarvis turned away from the window and sat down behind his
desk slowly.
"People..." he said, "look to us for stability and a consistency
of... product, as it were. We literally saved this region. and others."
Takagi could only remain silent in front of her superior. Her
fate, one way or the other, had been sealed the minute that wretched
hack had escaped her agents.
"As you may or may not be aware, Ms. Takagi," Jarvis
continued, well aware Takagi was completely informed, "Genom has
been recently... weighed down by some unfortunate consequences
from other... leaders of this corporation."
Jarvis drummed his fingers on the polished wood of his desk
for emphasis.
"As well as those ever so endearing vigilantes."
Takagi nodded; the Knight Sabers, of course. Who else would
Jarvis have been referring to? They had been a thorn in Genom's side
as far as publicity, bringing attention to berserk boomers. Eventually
they had even compromised one of Genom's most powerful executives.
"Yes," nodded Jarvis slowly. "We will not be exposed like
that ever again. Which brings me to wonder why information stolen
from our main computer has not been recovered yet? Especially when
that information, if made public, would harm the populace's belief and
trust in Genom in a way even the year's previous events have not."
Takagi was quick to speak up.
"The intruder has been eliminated, sir," she answered quickly.
"There were no traces left by our agents."
Jarvis's eyes bored into Takagi, burning right through her in
dispassionate apathy. Takagi might as well have been an ant trying to
get the attention of an elephant before being stepped on.
"No traces? Indeed," he said with anything but amusement.
"He managed to escape the boomers in that rat maze of a district, come
in contact with half the citizens of the zone, and slip into a coma of
his
own doing before your agents were able to deal with him. And then, he
did not have the information on him. Rather fine operation, I do
believe. Well done."
Takagi could have died right there. Not that she was at all
certain her life might be over sooner than later. Jarvis had a less
threatening outward appearance than other Genom executives did, but
he was several times more ruthless than most.
"But then, perhaps stupid luck may be on your side, Ms
Takagi," Jarvis said, straightening in his leather chair. "Perhaps
this...
addict who was able to enter our most protected systems merely threw
the information in a trash receptacle while fleeing. I would hope so,
for
your sake, Ms Takagi."
Jarvis got up and returned to the window, staring out into the
cold darkness.
"Should it be otherwise, you will find need of your services
here at an abrupt... and terrible termination."
Takagi bowed deeply and backed away. Had she not had the
willpower, she would have fled.
* * *
A sullen pink was rising out of the Pacific, announcing the
approach of the morning. It was a sluggish and heavy time of the day,
being neither day nor night. The lively and energizing lights of the
Sodo Ward had been mostly turned off for a couple of hours already,
except in some areas that catered to `hardier' patrons. Details to the
eye were hard to come by in the shadows.
AD Police inspector Daley Wong wondered idly if that was
not such a bad thing. This ugly twilight seemed to hide the uglier
filth
and disease that seemed to be just about everywhere these days. Wong
pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his noses and sighed. He
seriously doubted the inevitable smell and stains from the gutter would
be easy to remove.
"And me with my better shoes on this morning," he said.
A larger figure walked into the alley. Behind him, the flashing
lights from several patrol cars winked coldly. It would not be long
before the forensic teams with their analyzing equipment arrived.
"What's the matter, Wong?" asked AD Police inspector Leon
McNichol. "Kinda early to be bitching."
Daley shoved his hands past the sides of his jacket and into the
pockets of his pants. Turning away from his partner and back into the
alley, Daley shrugged.
"Just wondering if I should have been something a little more
cushy," he replied over his shoulder. "Like a public defender, or a
dentist."
"Kinda late to be bitching."
Leon followed Daley further into the grime. There was an
acrid and salty smell permeating the nauseating stench that made its
home in the back streets. Daley stopped up short, looking down.
"Here he is, Leon," he said.
Leon stepped up beside Daley and crouched down. Taking
out a small flashlight, he scanned a body lying on its side. The body
was rigid and contorted.
Daley watched where the beam from Leon's flashlight fell.
Leon paused as he reached the upper part of the body's torso.
"I'd say cause of death was an acute loss of a head," Daley
remarked blandly.
Leon shifted his feet and stood up from his crouch, scanning
around the body some more with his light. He sniffed and nudged the
body with the toe of his boot.
"There it is," identified Leon. "Looks like most of it has run
into the drain. Can you tell me again why we're here? This should be
a case for the regular police."
Daley ran his fingers through his hair and scratched the back
of his head. Sometimes he wondered about his partner's attention span.
"Leon," he said. "Weren't you listening to the incident
commander's report? Witnesses saw a couple with incredible strength
and speed chasing a fellow that meets the clothing description of this
guy. This couple also roughed up a couple of bouncers further up the
district."
Walking back out to the main street, Leon looked slightly
uncomfortable.
"Yeah, so?" he argued. "What of it?"
Daley shuffled up beside his partner. "Strength and speed to
beat up a pair of doormen twice the size of you sounds a little much for
an ordinary couple. Boomer's perhaps?"
Leon only snorted in reply.
"At any rate," continued Daley, "there's not much we can do
here until forensics gets some info back to us."
Climbing behind the controls of their patrol car, Leon did not
respond. In fact, he now looked rather sullen. The patrol car revved
to
life.
"Hey Leon," observed Daley with a little smirk. "At least
your favorite vigilantes didn't get here before we did."
"Shut up, Wong."
* * *
ADP File #234321.A
Classification: suspected boomer related homicide
Date: October 12, 2040
Location: Sodo Ward, Tokyo
Subject: Frederick Tachiyama (26)
Cause of Death: massive head trauma
Motive: unknown
Details: victim apparently pursued by unidentified couple
(suspected boomers by witness account). Victim
discovered in Sodo Ward alleyway by passersby.
Personal belongings left on body of victim. No
physical evidence at scene linking any suspects.
Autopsy Results: victim died with high levels of illegal
substance synthanol-tetrabizene (synth) in
bloodstream. Synth is substance suspected for use by
DataNet manipulators to enhance direct neural
interface connections. Highly addictive with
destructive side effects noted on the nervous system.
Next of Kin: Kimberly Tachiyama (24) (sister) (notified)
Action: frozen pending further evidence
ADP File #234321.B
Classification: homicide (forwarded by Tokyo Police)
Date: October 13, 2040
Location: Sodo Ward, Tokyo
Subject: Kaji Yamada (17)
Cause of Death: massive head trauma
Motive: unknown, suspected connection to File #234421.A
Details: victim found in apartment by parents, deceased.
Victim in possession of credit card of one Fredrick
Tachiyama (deceased). Card used earlier in the day
to illegally purchase various electronic components.
Tokyo police investigating possibility unknown
suspects traced use of Tachiyama's credit card to
Yamada. No physical evidence left at scene of crime
linking any suspects.
Next of Kin: Parents (notified)
Action: frozen pending further evidence
* * *
Excerpt from a Tokyo Underground Press interview with Priss Asagiri,
Lead vocalist of Sekira. (April 2040)
Interviewer: So, how do you feel about the world we live in?
Priss: ....
Interviewer: ...okaaay... So, if you weren't a singer, what
would you do?
Priss: ... I think I'd join the Knight Sabers. and blow
things up...
* * *
A persistent and annoying alarm greeted Kimberly Tachiyama
as the sun began to stream over Megalocity. Not that Kimberly could
actually see the sun; there were far to many apartment buildings
between her window and the dawn. The only real difference she could
tell each morning was a change from black darkness to a sickly gray
that illuminated the off the white buildings outside her apartment.
Groaning noisily, Kimberly fumbled with a hand at the little table by
her bed, searching for the offending timepiece. She finally hit a large
blue button on its top, sticking up out of its molded plastic box, and
the
alarm was replaced by generic retro-techno beats.
Kimberly peered blearily towards the twilight outside her
window with such angst and bitterness that any clueless teenager would
have admired. Her liquid display clock radio showed October 15, 6:45
am. Scratching underneath an armpit absently, the woman in her mid-
twenties stared through matted bangs of hair, blonde with split ends.
"Who created this stupid reality, anyway?" she asked out loud
after staring out into space.
Nothing in her apartment answered.
Nothing in her apartment ever did, but that was the nature of
conversations with inanimate objects in apartments. They were always
rather one sided.
A little while later, Kimberly opened up the front door of her
dwelling, showered and clothed for another day at work. Stepping
outside into the hallway, she almost tripped over a little package
outside her door. It was a small mail parcel with her name on it and no
return address. There was a little sticky note on top of it from a
cranky,
elderly neighbor. Something about the damn mail service sending it to
the wrong apartment number. So much for the perfection of tangible
mail delivery in a world dominated by electronic transfers.
The thought of electronic anything immediately pissed
Kimberly off to no end, and she angrily kicked the packing though her
door and slammed it shut without another glance.
Kimberly pressed her face up against the clear plastic of the
apartment elevator as it descended from the near top floor where her
apartment was towards the lobby. Despite being inexpensive, her
building was a fairly nice place to live, built new in the years after
the
big one had struck. Most people did not mind living in the bland
quarters, choosing not to think to hard about the countless billions of
little nano-machines that had constructed the structures throughout the
city with no small amount of help from armies of boomers.
There was not much comfort as the elevator plunged the
fifteen floors to the street level below. There had not been anything
resembling comfort at all, really, since the day before. It had all
been a
real big blur, the AD Police notifying Kimberly of her brother's
apparent murder. They said apparent because the AD Police was not
sure what had killed him first, the pulverization of Frederick's head or
the Synth in his blood stream. In angry shock (she could not decide
from another of her family being dead or the fact that `little Freddie'
was just another hacker junky on the DataNet), Kimberly had dutifully
answered the police summons to collect her brother's personal items
and choose a method of body disposal.
Kimberly's parents, like so many others, had died in the big
quake. They had died at work, in their big and shiny buildings that
engineers had so proudly erected as quakeproof. The irony being that
Kimberly and her little brother had survived unscathed at home in an
average Japanese house. From then on, Kimberly and little Freddie had
just been another couple of orphans amongst thousands. There was a
gap in Kimberly's memory from the time of the quake right through the
first few months of state-sponsored care in a massive tent city of
refugees. Honestly, she did not care one bit that she could not
remember any of it. Freddie was too young to remember at all.
She had her brother cremated at the police morgue. It was
easier and far cheaper to have Freddie's body disposed of in that
manner. Kimberly figured it was somehow fitting since the bodies of
her parents had never been identified, pulverized beyond recognition
like millions of others by falling buildings. What bits and pieces that
had not decayed completely by the time the construction boomers
arrived on the scene over the following years were incinerated by other
boomers designed to dispose of potential biological hazards with fire.
Kimberly was now completely without family, as far as she
could figure. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. who really knew? The
chaos, death, and destruction had been so widespread over Japan that in
the years after the quake, people were more overwhelmed as a whole
with picking up the shards of their own little tragedies than looking
for
missing relatives. There was a national service where queries for the
missing and the dead could be posted and searched through, but
Kimberly had never found anyone looking for her or her brother. She
could not remember when she stopped bothering to look.
And now Freddie was dead, too.
"Little shit," mouthed Kimberly, fogging the plastic window
of the elevator as it came to a stop at the lobby level.
Freddie had been in college learning design of computer
systems when he had gotten addicted to life (if one could call it that)
on
the DataNet. Endless hours upon hours of sitting in darkened dorm
rooms, staring at numerous vid-screens propped up on cardboard boxes
or scrap pieces of plastic crates, navigating the sites and data all
over
the world. DataNet addiction had developed the worst kind of otaku,
bringing a level of widespread obsession only seen in the worst fans of
the kinds of anime involving fourteen year old girls flashing their
cartoon panties while wielding magical makeup kits.
Kimberly did not understand either obsession, herself. All she
knew is some DataNet runners, apparently just like her brother, opted
for state of the art cranial implants for a more direct connection to
the
streams of information. The only drawback was the need to use the
drug synth to make the interfaces between the digital and the biological
gray matter of the brain function. The drawback was the long-term side
effects of synth being extremely debilitating, if not downright fatal.
In
a classic bureaucratic decision, the Japanese government had made
synth illegal very early on, but not outlawed the cranial implants that
required the drug. So, there was still a high demand for synth, and
there were more sources available than the police could ever hope to
get a handle on.
The beauty of synth was a child with a decent chemistry set
and high-end molecular sequencing software (provided as freeware on
the DataNet, naturally) could produce the stuff in quantity.
Consequently, most addicts tended to be their own suppliers, making it
almost impossible for the police department to combat the problem
with traditional anti-drug enforcement polices.
The only thing the police did have going for them was synth
produced nothing much in the way of a altered state of biological
chemistry for addicts who were not modded with the DataNet implants.
So, mainstream junkies never bothered to use synth long enough to
form any addiction to it.
There were three main ways to be a good runner or hacker of
the DataNet. The first was to have incredibly powerful computers at
your disposal, but that generally meant working for someone who could
afford the power you really needed to do some serious running.
Unfortunately, those systems tended to be closely monitored by people
whose sole job was to ensure employees were not using their systems
in ways the companies did not approve of. Second, you could have less
powerful and expensive computer systems, but be incredibly gifted,
creative, and have an inborn knack for how to mod your hardware to
get into the hard to reach areas of the DataNet. These people were
generally brilliant, few in number, and mostly benign in motivation as
far as their running and hacking activities. The final way you could
become an advanced DataNet runner was to be without expensive
computer equipment and untalented enough to know how to make do
with less.
It was from this third and largest pool of DataNet addicts that
most of the cranial modded synth types came from. The mods to a
human noggin were surprisingly not that expensive, as nano-machines
made the need for skilled surgeons completely unnecessary. Synth side
effects were well known, however, which kept the population of
modded hackers to a bare minimum.
Why did the few decide to risk certain degradation of their
nervous systems? Kimberly did not know, and in the case of her
brother, she decided she really did not care. She had not heard one
peep from him in almost a year, anyway. Freddie had chosen his life as
Kimberly had chosen hers, with the intention that never the twain
should meet.
`Little jerk couldn't even leave me that much,' she griped to
herself on a lightly populated train out of town.
Kimberly's work was a little way out of town, in one of the
areas that had yet to benefit from reconstruction after the quake. In
fact, the majority of buildings still standing were condemned, housing
without modern facility the most desperate of society. Property values
were near rock bottom this far out of Tokyo, which was of great benefit
if you were a startup company.
Not to mention if you were a startup company trying to break
into a Genom controlled market.
In Kimberly's case, if you were a college graduate in cyber-
molecular structures and pseudo-biologic systems, chances were you
went in with some Genom subsidiary to help build the better boomer or
any of a million other products. However, not many grads got to do the
really interesting work that Genom had to offer. Chances were your
skills in that field would go to work on some small component of the
newest useless gadget, and that was if you got to work in your desired
field at all.
Genom was notorious for hiring people with good potential,
and then sticking them in a dark corner somewhere just to keep them
from working for any competitors. And the atrocious contracts new
hires signed legally prevented them from getting a job with a
competitor in a related for fifteen years should they decide to quit
Genom. Genom lawyers called it protecting their corporate secrets
(ignoring the fact the poor twenty-somethings never knew any secrets
to begin with). So, it was stay in a hole with Genom, or face a bleak
job hunt with a useless degree.
Kimberly had taken a more radical track at graduation,
throwing her lot in with a startup company trying to make a niche in
advanced upgrade parts for boomers. The money was good, the rest of
her colleagues young and idealistic, and the atmosphere relaxed.
Besides, it appealed to Kimberly to think of herself as something of an
outlaw in the Genom controlled boomer technology world. Sure, the
company was small, in a ratty warehouse in the crappy outskirts of
town, and sometimes hurting for development money, but there were
never any really tough times. There was hope that after four years, the
company might be one of those not swallowed by the Genom machine.
Walking over broken sidewalks and empty concrete shells of
shattered dreams, Kimberly made her way to her company's
warehouse. Skirting around the pitiful homeless drunk, who had
claimed the front area of the warehouse as his territory, Kimberly
pulled out her security card and slid it through the identification
check
at the door. Yanking the heavy door open, she entered and let it close
slowly behind her. As usual, the area was its general clutter of
workspaces and offices without dividing walls, beyond which covering
most of the huge warehouse floor was the research and production area.
Only, no one was there that morning.
Kimberly blinked a little, looking at her watch and reaffirming
to herself that she was actually late for work.
"Oh, hey Kimberly," an unhappy voice droned from off to her
left.
She turned and spied one of her coworkers, a guy slightly
older than herself named Osamu. He was your quintessential computer
geek, and had some of the bad personal hygiene to prove it. He had a
little plastic crate, which he was filling with some items. Some of
them
were rather expensive bits of company computer ware.
"Uh, morning," Kimberly replied warily, approaching the
unkempt looking man. "What are you doing with your deck there?
And where is everyone? Oh, crap, don't tell me today is a holiday."
Osamu looked up from his packing with a pathetic lopsided
grin on his face, like the one bit of joy he was going to have that day
was knowing something Kimberly did not. Kimberly watched him
with distaste, glad her little workstation had been as far away from his
as possible.
"Didn't you hear over the weekend?" he asked with a little bit
of nastiness. "The old geezer bailed the country with our profits."
"Excuse me?" Kimberly replied in a dull tone. The geezer
Osamu referred to was the thirty-nine year old owner of the company.
Osamu continued his packing. "Yeah, he emailed everyone
Friday night," he said. "Told us our venture was gonna hit rock bottom
here in the next few quarters, so he was taking what profits there were
and heading to America before we went bankrupt."
"What the fuck?" demanded Kimberly with a cross between
anger and amazement. "What do you mean he took our profits?"
With everything to do with her brother over the weekend, she
had not once thought about checking her computer for messages.
Osamu finished his packing, picked up his plastic crate, and
headed for the door. "Just that," he said. "He took his remaining
investment and split. Sucks, huh? Nice of the bastard to at least tell
us,
eh?"
"He can't do that!" she argued. Then hesitating a bit, she
added, "Can he?"
Stopping by the door, the programmer shrugged. "Who
knows," he answered. "Point is, he did. Grade-A asshole, if you ask
me. We don't even get our last week's pay."
Kimberly almost started to run to catch Osamu at the door
before stopping herself. "Wait a sec! You can't take the company's
equipment like that, can you?"
Osamu smiled in a pasty fashion. "Actually, I can. The old
geezer always bought everything here in cash, since we never could
secure credit with anyone. It's paid for, so no point in letting it
rot.
Consider it severance pay, if you want. After all, everyone else's
already been through and took their own shit yesterday. Laters."
The door closed behind him, and Kimberly was left alone.
Looking around she noticed that everyone else's desks and stations had
been cleaned out of most of the portable deck stations. There was a lot
of expensive equipment still left throughout the warehouse, but it was
too big for anyone to want to take home. All of it was at least a nine
months old, and of no practical value outside of a lab. At any rate, it
would probably be obsolete already, even being top of the line
equipment a scant eight months earlier.
Another little part of Kimberly's life broke off and dropped
away behind her.
* * *
Sylia Stingray had a problem, and she definitely did not like
having problems.
Actually, any of the elegant woman's closest acquaintances
would probably agree Sylia had several problems, and most of them
personal. Right then, however, her most pressing issue was deep below
the Silky Doll. Standing alone in one of the subterranean enclaves that
served as the headquarters of the Knight Sabers, arms crossed, Sylia
faced the terminal of her main research computer.
Unlike other powerful machines Sylia had at her disposal, this
particular terminal was different from all the rest. The primary
difference being it was a completely stand-alone machine tied into no
other computers or networks of any kind. In other words it was
completely isolated from any access except by someone who had the
authority to activate the computer's terminal. And Sylia was the only
person in the world who had the codes to access it. There was good
reason for having a computer isolated from the rest of the world,
especially since it housed all the data and research on each of the
Knight Saber Hardsuits. That information could never be allowed to
leave that particular room.
Sylia ground her teeth. If that were true, then how had Genom
defeated her vigilantes so handily several nights before? It had seemed
like another rogue boomer, but had quickly turned into an ambush.
Genom released a whole battalion of combat boomers equipped with
advanced weaponry specifically designed to render the Hardsuits'
protective armor useless.
They had barely escaped with their lives. Even now, Priss and
Linna were laid up with broken limbs and battered bodies. Nene had
helped Sylia pull the two out of the Genom attack, but the blonde
hacker had been a near basket case since. How none of them had
escaped being killed was a mystery.
Genom had shown intimate knowledge of the Knight Saber's
weaknesses, including some Sylia had not even known existed. To do
so meant someone had to have gained knowledge of the Hardsuit
designs.
Or did it?
Sensitive information could only have come from this
particular computer before Sylia, and the enigmatic Stingray knew no
information had left the terminal. No one besides her had ever
accessed it. So how could Genom known so much about the
Hardsuits? Even Nigel did not know enough about their systems to
present a real security risk, especially not since he had spilled his
guts
to Mason.
Sylia put her fingertips to a throbbing temple. Her regular
headaches were doing nothing to improve her mood.
Turning on her heal, Sylia left the room, heavy doors sliding
closed behind her. Walking down a hallway, she turned into the Pit.
Before her, suspended on their maintenance supports were the four
Hardsuits. Hers and Nene's had minimal damage, but Priss and
Linna's were a mess, slashed with scorch marks from Genom weapons
and showing numerous armor failures. It would be impossible to repair
them in that state. They were not much more than extremely expensive
scrap now.
Sylia considered for a moment the last time she had taken the
time to upgrade the Hardsuits. She could not remember right offhand.
What if Genom had been sacrificing boomers and property to the
Knight Saber's destructive vengeance for the sole purpose of
observation of the vigilantes? Was it possible Genom's analyzing
devices could have pierced the carefully packaged secrets of the
Hardsuits?
Pride almost let Sylia dismiss the idea, but the simple truth of
it all finally sunk in. Sylia did the upgrades almost single handedly
to
the Hardsuits, which took time and lots of money. Genom had the
resources to throw hundreds of top engineers and billions at the little
problem of the Knight Sabers. Perhaps it was only a matter of time
before Genom caught up to them and the secrets her father left from his
lab.
Swearing under her breath, Sylia mentally berated herself. Of
course it was reckless and idiotic to have put off upgrading the
Hardsuits. Her cause was too important to allow a setback like this to
occur from a lack of her diligence. The race to stay ahead of the
technological curve was nothing to be taken lightly, especially against
a
company like Genom. The newest upgrading of the Hardsuits would
just have to take precedence over everything else for a while.
That would take a lot of time, but with Priss and Linna hurt,
there was no way Sylia was going out with only Nene in obsolete
Hardsuits.
Sylia shut the lights off to the Pit and headed for the turbo
elevator back to the Silky Doll.
* * *
"I'm home," Kimberly called out bleakly as she unlocked and
swung her apartment door open.
Her apartment was still refusing to answer, but even that failed
to annoy the out of work designer. She trudged through her door, a box
of belongings and items swiped from her company warehouse under
one arm. Closing the door, she continued into her home, kicking
something small in the darkness. Sighing, Kimberly slumped her
shoulders.
"Lights," she mumbled.
The lights came on in her apartment, way too bright for her
comfort, naturally. She squinted for a few moments until her eyes
adjusted, looking away at the floor. As Kimberly's focus came back,
she spied what had connected with the toe of her shoe. Resting on the
carpet a couple feet away was the small mail parcel that had been
outside her door that morning. The sticky note had fallen off not far
away.
Kimberly stared absently at the parcel, with a gaze that might
have well been fixed on something a mile away. Almost a minute
ticked by as she stood motionless, her mind blank. Finally, breaking
her revere, Kimberly sighed. She let the tension fade from the small of
her back and bent over for the package. It was very light.
Peering at the label, Kimberly saw there was no return address
on the brightly colored plastic covering. Holding it in the palm of her
hand, she also noticed that her name was on it, but the address was
wrong. The apartment number on the label was from the crabby
woman down the hall who had stuck the sticky note on it. The old lady
was an odd bird, constantly threatening to use her `weapon' to defend
herself against any of the delinquents who filled the streets. Kimberly
did not know what the weapon was, nor if the old lady even had one,
but she never felt the old woman was worth talking to long enough to
find out.
A clock chimed in the apartment. Looking up from the small
package in her palm, Kimberly noticed she was late to meet one of her
friends for dinner. She did not feel much like eating, but the
opportunity to drown her unemployed sorrows in alcohol seemed
agreeable. Pocketing the postal parcel, Kimberly turned on her heel
and headed out of her apartment.
"Lights," she mumbled as the apartment door closed behind
her.
* * *
Takagi sat in her darkened office, the soft glow of a data
screen illuminating her high boned features. Brows furrowed in
concentration, she observed the information intelligence officers in the
Genom Corporation were feeding her from their central office. As each
new stream of information arrived on Takagi's screen, she filtered it
and looked for leads on the young DataNet hacker who had stolen from
Genom's top secret databases.
She wondered where the information was. She wondered if
she could find it. She also wondered if she would be allowed to live
long enough to know one way or the other.
The facts, she thought to herself, trying to concentrate. The
hacker had broken into Genom's most secret and dedicated of servers,
almost by accident by all accounts. The hacker had downloaded the
information and made a copy of the information on a data disk. By his
pure luck, or the ineptitude of the boomers sent to retrieve the data,
the
hacker had escaped his apartment with his life and the missing data.
There was the obvious assumption, Takagi reasoned. The
worm's deck confirmed the data had been downloaded onto a portable
media, and that media was not in the apartment. Therefore, the media
must be floating out there in the city somewhere. Be it in a trash
receptacle or in the hands of another unidentified person, that was what
needed to be discerned. But where had the hacker deposited the data?
He had fled the pursuing boomers for over an unbelievable fourteen
blocks of the maze know as the Sodo Ward.
Somewhere in those fourteen blocks, the hacker had separated
himself from the missing data, but where -
"Stop," Takagi commanded out loud, forcing the data stream
to pause.
Eyes moving rapidly, her mind raced over the known timeline
of events as she scanned the screen. There was something important
missing.
"His credit card," she murmured, taping her chin slowly.
"Why did he lose his credit card during the pursuit?"
A lowlife with a petty theft record had gotten his hands on the
card somehow and used it repeatedly. That he had signed his own
death warrant the minute he used the stolen card did not concern
Takagi in the least, and the punk was the furthest thing from her mind.
The card itself, however.
"He was in final withdrawal from the effects of prolonged
Synth use," Takagi continued out loud to the empty room. "Loss of
motor control, impaired judgement. if he tried to use it while being
chased, would he have even noticed dropping it somewhere? And if so,
what did he use it. for?"
Takagi felt like a blundering sophomore Genom intelligence
agent. Eyes becoming narrowed and intense, she called up Fredrick
Tachiyama's credit report. Why had she missed what was so obvious,
she berated herself. Narrowing her search field, Takagi focused in on
credit card activity during the boomer chase.
And there it was, use of an automated postal server. Name
and address of a small package the exact weight of your average data
disk.
Takagi closed off her data stream completely and summoned
her two assassination boomers. It was time for them to redeem
themselves.
* * *
In a city as big as Tokyo, it was hard to imagine people living
completely alone and isolated from any other human being. The reality
was the larger the society, the more people tended to be isolated from
it. Unlike the small town where everyone had the opportunity to know
everyone else and rely upon them for survival, the big city allowed for
many conveniences that could keep a person from ever having to leave
their home.
The old woman that had lived alone and secluded in her
apartment since the big one had occurred years before had lost all her
family. In that time since, she had isolated herself from the world
that
had shaken itself to the ground, destroyed her life, then miraculously
raised itself before her bewildered eyes.
Those eyes were now lifeless and destroyed as well. Clutched
in one hand gnarled with age was a child plastic gun, realistic in color
and detail, but wholly without the ability to fire any ammunition.
Above the ruined woman, a man and woman in very expensive suits
slowly examined the apartment, looking for missing Genom data, only
there was no data to be found. The apartment the old lady rented was
completely without a computer of any kind.
The address was right.
The person was wrong.
The man and woman looked up from their fruitless search as
information was sent directly to their boomer brains. The police were
on their way, notified by neighbors of a disturbance in the apartment
complex. Acknowledging the information, the two boomers stepped
through the smashed front door of the apartment and exited.
There would be another chance to locate the right person later.
* * *
Part 2 forthcoming.
Other fanfiction can be found at:
members.xoom.com/mmcavoy/
Comments and Criticisms welcomed!
email at mmcavoy@ejourney.com
Sincerely,
Michael McAvoy
May 21, 2000