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A quote from J.D. Salinger, from a fake 
play one of his characters is reading:

  Rick (quietly): My darling, isn't that a line from "A Farewell
to Arms"? 
  Tina (Turns, furious): Get out of here. Get out! Get out of here
before I jump out of this window. Do you hear me?
  Rick (grabbing her): Now you listen to me. You beautiful little
moron. You adorable, childish, self dramatizing--



(sic)
Damn, thats all there was, it was so great.










     6

  I had that short dream again. The one where I'm 
dangling over an incredibly huge whirlpool of black water. It's half 
a mile below me and is all I can see on every horizon. Overhead is 
a dirty ceiling of machinery and pipes that spill myrrh on me, 
splashing off my bare skin. I'm falling and my fear of it is growing 
so bad I can't breathe. The maelstrom slowly comes up to meet me 
and I can only let it. We never actually touch though; it always gets 
too intense by that point and I wake up. 

  Morning is when I am most willing to surrender myself to 
my subconscious and stop trying to interrupt my stream of sensory 
input. It feels like thinking about any one thing for longer than it 
takes for it to pass me by is sacrilegious. Trying to get up, work, 
and in any way change my surroundings feels deeply hateful to me. 
But I do it anyway. I tried the total passivity thing once and was so 
disgusted I banned it from my thoughts. Now I have trouble 
finding it, like when all I want to do is dissolve in the swirling 
black water, and I can't even surrender enough to see it happen. I 
never want to wake up again, I think to myself.

  And surprise, surprise; I end up doing it alone that 
Wednesday afternoon. At least it seemed that way. When I didn't 
feel Karen next to me, I listened very intently for her breathing, not 
wanting to open my eyes. I didn't hear it near me, but I did hear 
other breathing in the room. Somewhere toward the kitchen 
someone (a man) was breathing deeply. Slow, drawn out breaths 
that came out a little raspy. That would be Zig without a doubt. I 
listened for the quicker strained breaths I associated with Diago 
when he had to do unnecessary walking. The heavier man was 
never in good shape. But nope, he wasn't around either. As long as 
it was just Zig and me then, I opened my eyes. A wall screen came 
on.

  <blip>

  <blip>

  YOU'VE GOT NEWS!

  Click. Not anymore I don't.

  Smoke curled in the air above. Zig was in the far corner 
pulling on a joint and flipping through his little black book. He had 
bandages over his left shoulder and tape on his fingers. But he was 
recently washed and looked a lot better than I did. He saw my eyes 
aimed in his direction and shut the book.

  "What up, Zig?"

  "You look different."

  I shrugged.

  He gestured at me with his left hand and said, "Did you do 
it?"

  I knew what he meant but still answered, "Do what?"

  "I never saw Chris again after you and I split up, and if he 
had come after me himself I probably wouldn't be sitting here. 
Instead it was a car full of gang boys who torched Castro's just to 
get at me. Karen and I only escaped because-- (Zig exhaled 
smoke) -I'm the fuckin man."

  "I know, I know," I said complacently.

  "But we're not all that talented. You, my friend, have 
gunshot wounds, and so I take it the big guy came after you."
  
  "How do you know these weren't from cops?"

  "I don't think anyone but Chris could tag you behind the 
neck. You need to clean that out soon."

  "I will."

  "So did you kill him or not?"

  I sighed and looked uncomfortable. "He *might* still be 
alive..."

  "What does that mean?"

  I told him the whole warped story. It only took five 
minutes, so he was still puffing smoke when I was done. I sat up 
on the couch and stretched without much pain. My hip had scabbed 
over and the bandage on my neck was numb. This numbness was 
irritating. 

  Getting up and walking into the kitchen, I found hot coffee 
and drank right out of the pot. It burned my mouth but also woke 
me up. I stood there and scratched myself while Zig got out of his 
chair and followed me in.

  "So we're back to the original question. What now?"

  "I only have a vague idea," I said.

  I probably had less than that. The plan-in-question's only 
stipulation was that I had to end up getting Alethea out of the 
Apothecary whether she thought it was the right thing to do or not. 
After that, the city would repeat its history. If Jules was right, the 
remaining gang boys would soon be caught and executed. The 
hostages would be returned in exchange for immunity, which the 
police would freely give and then freely take back. Chris' war had 
probably failed. The Mandate would find new members and the 
cycle of citizen unrest/martial law would continue. Our great city 
would be back where it started in a month.

  "We're gonna need heavier guns. New cyc's. Fake papers, 
so we can get on the train to Lanz Island. And anything else you 
can think of. I want Alethea back here tonight."

  "I can't get all that stuff by this evening!"

  "What about all your contacts?"

  "They're gonna want cash up front. I can't call in that 
many favors. Haven't you gotten paid for your race yet? It was like 
a week and a half ago."

  "I got paid, but the cops froze my bank account. 
They're still looking for me over the subway shooting thing. Don't 
you have any cash hidden anywhere? Bail bonds or anything? How 
much will we need?"

  Zig rolled his eyes. "Around fifteen large. And no, I don't 
have wads of cash lying around anymore. Besides, I thought 
weapons were useless. Rufius being invincible and all."

  "Nah, he ain't invincible. You could still shoot him when 
he wasn't looking; he isn't all-knowing. And I'm starting to think 
he won't give us any trouble either way."

  "Why is that?"

  "Well, he never showed up after we iced White. We 
wandered around down there for at least two hours afterward 
looking for a way out, and he could have killed us anytime during. 
We just found the empty truck and drove back to the city. I mean, 
he certainly could have stopped us if he wanted to."

  "Well then why the guns at all?"

  "Because I don't think it's that he wants us alive, I think 
it's that he has too much other shit to do. Alethea said Yuma was 
only one of his two projects. He's probably trying to get the other 
one in working order by the time he needs it. He's alone now, 
remember?"

  "What do you think he's planning on doing?"

  "I don't know. Chris thinks he's looking for some kind of 
immortality solution. All the work with merusion and psionics 
probably point to something like that since he has never shown any 
real interest in anybody who hasn't been involved. I don't 
remember a lot from when he and I had worked together in the 
past; those parts of my memory seem to be the darkest. We know 
that the Yuma machine is probably at the center of it. Other than 
that, and why he needs other psionics users in addition to himself 
is beyond me. Maybe he's trying to leave the city entirely."
  
  "What? And go where exactly?"

  "I don't know, the other side of the planet maybe. See 
what's really out there. Or even space. I know he had an interest in 
that thing they found out near the Island ten years ago."

  Zig thought. "I seem to remember the news stories."

  "Yeah, it was a big hunk of metal that had the word 
'Aeronaut' written on the side in strange letters."

  "What was it?"

  "I have no idea."

  "None of this sounds all that serious, you know."
 
  "Well it is to him, believe me." 

  "I mean, he experimented on and killed all those people 
years ago just to find a way out into space? That doesn't make 
sense. Guys like him with special powers have better things to do 
with their time. He could be running the city right now. He could 
make everyone it his slaves and build himself a giant palace." He 
laughed. "Shit, that's what I'd probably do."

  "No, he's a self-certified intellectual. He likes to deny 
himself a lot."

  "What a giant waste of time. Sounds like a real fun boss."

  I shrugged. "He isn't that fond of me anymore. Whatever 
he's getting into, I bet it's gonna happen soon while Das Uberdog 
is still tying up the cops. They still have a platoon dug in 
somewhere on Lanz Island and will probably outlast the resistance 
there until heavy reinforcements arrive or they pull out the Troops. 
That gives us at least until tomorrow or the next day."

  "So we bust out Alethea and then come right back here? 
You aren't going to try to stop Rufius?"

  "I don't see how I can. I don't have those super powers 
anymore," I said.

  "Shit. There's no way we could zap you again until you got 
them back?" 

  "The merusion chamber got busted back in Ventiss. The 
only other one is the big cross in the Apothecary itself. And by the 
time we get there, I ain't hanging around."

  Zig nodded and sat down on one of the bar stools. "Alright. 
Then I guess I'll see what I can get by tonight and we'll leave."

  "I think that's about all we can do. Unless I figure out what 
Rufius is up to ahead of time. I'm sure it isn't going to make the 
rest of the city any happier, but we could always try to turn the 
matter over to the cops. This is what Alie's idea was. Let Rufius 
take half of them with him and we kill two birds." I left the kitchen 
and headed toward the first floor bathroom.

  Zig called after me, "Screw! I mean Rick! Karen said she 
had to check in with her roommate so she caught a cab an hour 
ago. She said she would come back later."

  "Sounds good. What about Diago?"

  "He's at the track. But he's also got a meeting with the 
racing board after that. He says those get-togethers never last long 
and that he'll be back here by six."

  "Then you got four hours to make your calls. See if we can 
get a few tools on credit, whatever you have to do. I need a 
shower."

  Zig ambled over and caught up with me. "You want a joint 
first? Your neck is gonna hurt like hell under cold water."

  "No. I sort of gave Karen the idea I wasn't smoking at all 
anymore. Besides, it just makes it harder to concentrate."

  "Bullshit."

  I laughed. "Well either way, no."

  He looked at me. "Is that an open refusal?" My mouth 
betrayed the barest hint of a smile. "Oh, I get it. I bet she got very 
convincing, huh?" he laughed.

  "I'm a one woman man, remember?"

  "My ass. When I woke up she was pressed up next to you 
with her head on your chest."

  "Then she did it when I was asleep. I was completely 
unaware."

  He gave me the look.

  "You heard me."







-----------








  At half past eight that night, Karen and Diago had both 
returned and the four of us went out to eat. The whole east side of 
the Plaza had been barricaded off so we drove north. It was 
decided by a vote that it ought to be Diago's treat, so we went to 
Alexandro's, an open air restaurant at the top of the Caesar Dome. 
I had been originally opposed to the idea, since all that time could 
have been spent preparing. But I was swayed and the night turned 
out to be perfect. Black ties were not optional, but we had come 
prepared.

  At ten the party headed back home because Zig said he had 
to wait around until someone called him there. Most of the police 
had vacated the streets so we had no problems driving. Still in the 
mood for night air, we sat out on Diago's patio and tried to chat 
about something tame. It didn't seem to work. 

  "So how come you don't die?"

  Good question, Zigwell. You've been very attentive lately. 
Now, any other questions? Any at all?

  I sat back in my cushioned deck chair and tried to decide 
where it began. Karen looked back and forth between both of us 
without understanding. Diago just waited silently. He of course 
was the one person who had personally known Screw before I 
came into the picture, so even if Zig hadn't asked, Diago would 
have. It didn't matter, I would have to lay it all out anyway. There 
were more details than I could ever fit into a book back there, but I 
only planned on stating what was really necessary. Zig was right, 
some of it needed to be said before any of us dug ourselves deeper 
in this little hole. Our enemies, Rufius and the Mandate were real. 
A cloudy night sky also waited patiently for my confession. This 
was the first time in four years I had thought about it myself, and 
the first time in decades I had told anyone else. So it would take a 
while to find the right words. A part of me wondered how I would 
take it myself.

  "When I was twenty-two I graduated from College with 
degrees in Anthropology and Campaign Diplomacy. It was winter 
and I had no time for anything else than intellectual self-
indulgence. So the degrees took on meaning. The anthropology 
ultimately led me to hate the Mandate right along with everyone 
else, but the campaign strategy began to inspire an interest in its 
military. There is no better way to skip the miles of red tape that go 
along with pushing a new philosophy on the people than by using 
overwhelming force. It allows new ideals to stay pure without 
having to adapt themselves simply for the purpose of justifying 
their period of transition to the technically ignorant. So that's what 
I decided to do. I skipped being a cop by testing high, and went 
straight into the Special Forces. Shortly after I turned twenty-three 
they cut me loose and I joined the 101st Special Battalion. It was 
the first time I had ever been completely on my own and I began to 
enjoy every day of it.

  "We were set with the task of running barn security around 
the Island. The job wasn't that important but made a good stepping 
stone for what I really wanted to get into, campaign management. 
Maybe work for a Director someday and get a few of my own 
ideas made into law. It was a indistinct aspiration at best.

  "About three years went by where we didn't have any 
major incidents. Lanz Island was not a place you went to commit 
crimes. The other men were more intent on looking good in front 
of their friends and families than killing criminals, but I didn't 
mind because I was just as intent on trying to harden myself 
through training. I didn't have a lot of long term attachments and 
had pretty much married the job. It just felt like what I was 
supposed to do. Like I said, we hadn't seen any hard action yet, so 
there was time for all that bullshit. My father had recently been 
elected to the Mandate and I had nothing to hold me down."

  "What?" Diago interrupted.

  "Just hear me out. Somewhere into my seventh month as a 
Captain I was picked to spend four weeks back in the city on paid 
vacation. It had been so long since I had spent any of the money 
that had been accruing in my bank account that I found I didn't 
have a real good idea of what to do with it. I wound up at the 
Aqueduct train station one day a complete stranger to my own city. 
Nothing immediately jumped out at me, so I went to bars and clubs 
to pass the nights. 

  "It really hit me then that I knew no one anymore and that 
having the shaved scalp of an officer was keeping any civilians 
from approaching me. No one liked grads in the late 
Technicization Age either. It was that first week back in the 
relative ease of civilian life that started to give me doubts about a 
life long career in the military. Not that I was sick of the regimen, 
in fact I was uncomfortable not having it there to make my 
decisions for me. But the people around me were so free and 
unchallenged that in a way they were stronger men than I. You 
could see this in their behavior, disrespect for guys like me who 
had so much energy and not a clue what to do with it. The only 
thing my training had really meant was that I was afraid to live 
without it.

  "What really struck me were the looks on people's faces as 
I continually passed them on the sidewalks of the Plaza. They had 
this pale look of curiosity to them, an open-mindedness that was so 
familiar, I suddenly realized where exactly I had become different. 
You see, when someone sets a purpose before you, when your 
goals are laid down by someone else who you trust enough to 
obey, you become ten times as strong of heart than you ever were 
before. Trust consumes doubt, and it feels right. My generals had 
made me their son, given me the direction that I craved. But what I 
had lost was self consideration, and with that goes the desire to 
change and seek new selves. I had lost my boyhood curiosity 
which for all my life I had revered as my best quality. The quality 
that would make me find a way to be great one day where others 
had merely acquiesced. I wanted that look back, and after only a 
week or two I was frantically searching myself to see where I had 
put it last.

  "And to my utter dismay and grievance, it did not appear. I 
had changed into some duplicate of the perfect soldier I had sweat 
and bled for three years to be, and suddenly it all amounted to 
nothing. Because I had never really wanted to grow up. I had just 
wanted to be a bigger part of my environment; a bigger, stronger 
player. The body and mind can age, but the soul never changes. It 
just becomes a larger or smaller reflection of itself. My soul, that 
feeling of identity that I carried around with me since birth was the 
reason I was alive at all, it was how I was able to enjoy anything, 
fear anything, love anything. Everything I saw in the world was 
merely a reflection of what I saw in those occasional glimpses of 
my soul, like those fractions of a second where your eyes actually 
cross the sun. The rawest experience of existence itself was 
contained there, and of course nothing else in existence could ever 
be a worthy trade. Maybe I was fantastic at being a soldier and 
standing up for others, and truly it made me feel like a good and 
worthy citizen of the city. I had gained some well-deserved pride. 
But it wasn't what I had ever really wanted deep down, and now I 
realized that had lost most or all of that holy vision. It absolutely 
crushed me."

  "In only two weeks?" Karen was sitting forward in her seat 
paying attention, while Zig and Diago looked uncomfortable.

  "Shit," I said, "maybe it was only two hours, or two 
seconds, I don't know. But it was a voice that I hadn't paid 
attention to for so long that I had forgotten was there. You lose 
thousands of basic impulses when you become a soldier and you 
don't miss them. Somewhere along the line this one had gotten lost 
in the midst of the others and was flushed out as well. But what 
could I have done? It was something I had taken for granted for so 
long that I had never even considered the possibility that it could 
die. That wasn't the kind of thing I thought happened to healthy 
people. But it did. One day I looked for that bit of my spirit; I sat 
and waited to talk to the part that never learns, the simple divinely 
inspired material that is common to anything that is conscious, 
probably animals and plants too, and it just didn't wink back at me.

  "Torn wide open and battered down, I spent the rest of my 
vacation time in a sliding self hatred that eventually became 
nothing more than malaise. I loathed my new insight, my new 
population of formal military instincts. All attempts at reaching out 
to other people completely ceased. I even slept in alleys just to 
help myself feel worse about what had happened. It was the only 
way I could think of to be true to the memory of something that 
wasn't there anymore. Of course subconsciously, little doubts had 
been allowed to set in which tried to change my mind and make 
me feel better, or at least stimulate some hope, but I knew what 
they really signified and I snuffed them as soon as I would notice 
they had appeared. Pain was the only thing that was true. I started 
to want to end it. 

  "The train that would take me back to the Island came and 
went without me on it; I was AWOL, and mostly out of spite. With 
no inspiration I found myself wandering through public gatherings 
waiting to be audited so that they would throw me in jail. This 
would be my great excuse, if you follow me. But fate wouldn't 
grant me this small pleasure. I became afraid of the shame that 
would accompany my capture, from my parents and my fellow 
officers. This was strange because I had assumed that upon losing 
one's soul, other people's opinions wouldn't matter to you 
anymore. Somehow they did though.

  "Afraid to go back and afraid to stay, I had run out of real 
options. One night I broke into the Museum of Natural History to 
escape what I thought was a police patrol shadowing me. If you've 
ever been inside you know the place is huge and has maybe twenty 
floors of basements. I found a stairwell that led down to the very 
bottom one and went down thinking I could probably hide out for 
days in its cluttered expanses. There was a mess of large rooms 
filled with nostalgic junk from before the Technicization Age. I 
spent hours just wandering around in it, seeing if I could figure out 
what it all been used for. As I remember, there were dens of 
incomprehensible objects fashioned out of stone, and many 
entirely out of plastic; very little that was iron or steel. This is what 
made them so strange and sparked my interest. It was like they 
must have made up for their frailty in other ways. Back when the 
Mandate was still just smoke and mirrors.

  "At some point, following that path through the forest of 
dead notions, it dawned on me that I was feeling the tinges of my 
own curiosity surfacing. That kind of feeling is almost impossible 
to nail down, but over and over again, out of the corner of my eye, 
I would catch myself wanting to know more about these household 
items that belonged to the city when it wasn't ours. Things our city 
would never see fit to produce now, yet had been fashioned in the 
human mind's own image centuries before the city had an 
ambition. This alone had made them curious and real to me. I 
marveled at things so mundane as the broken stone feet of the 
statue of a lady. I still felt no soul, but this was more than a clue to 
where it might someday be found.

  "Of course, there happened to be a lone door in the back 
that was locked off and so I naturally assumed that the most 
important and mysterious treasures were contained therein. It was 
locked, but came open after a mild rant. Expecting gold, I came 
upon a giant empty room, a perfect cube, where a man and a 
woman froze in a very compromising situation. The man was 
lowering the woman into a giant twenty foot opening in the floor; 
bound, gagged, and striving to free herself. My initial surprise 
subsided quickly and I rushed the man as he stood before a winch, 
licking his lips expectantly. He was young, but looked incredibly 
familiar. I asked him what the hell he was doing and he laughed at 
me like he was waiting for the question.

  "This was Rufius. The name meant nothing at the time he 
first spoke it. But he quite amiably reached out to shake my hand 
and said that he was pleased we had finally met. He said that he 
knew why I had come down here; he hadn't known that it would 
be me specifically, but had known I was on my way. He had also 
been a soldier at one point and was searching for similar answers 
about himself. His story was strange to say the least, and I actually 
stood there for a minute and listened while the pretty woman in 
ropes dangled behind me. Rufius claimed that he felt that loss of 
something in himself over the last year and had begun to rove the 
city looking for a clue to what had become of that  gift of spiritus 
vitae. That he had also wandered into the underground reaches of 
this vast museum one night and his trip had taken him here, where 
the woman lay next to the hole in the ground, asleep. 

  "After waking naturally she said in a melancholy tone that 
her name was unimportant. She asked him what had brought him 
to that room, and he spoke vehemently about his realization that he 
was losing his identity to a cloud of misconceived ideas about what 
he should do with his life. She listened carefully and replied in a 
sad tone that she was all that was left of anyone's soul. She 
claimed that she was not a person, but represented something far 
greater for everyone who had ever lived in the city. She said that 
what we had done to ourselves over the years had manifested itself 
in her predicament, locked in the basement of a museum and 
growing nearer to falling down the well that would finally take her 
to the center of the world where halves would become whole once 
again and the city's misery would end."

  Waiting a beat, and then without looking at Karen to my 
left, I continued. "Rufius had apparently eaten that story up and 
began scheming as to what he could do about it. He begged her to 
return to the surface with him but she refused, saying it would 
mean nothing but her death. She wouldn't dare enter the abyss 
though either, because it would mean the end of the world as we 
knew it, and she still loved us. Rufius did not take this well. She 
had him at an impasse he wasn't willing to accept, because to him, 
it meant he would never be whole again in this lifetime. I asked 
him how things had progressed to the current situation and he 
laughed once again. If she wasn't willing to make the journey for 
herself, than for the good of the city it was his duty to do the job 
alone."

  I sat silently as my last words sank in. I hadn't thought of 
the details to the story in so long I was amazed myself at how 
ridiculous they sounded in the current light. But it was all true, 
there was no doubt about that.

  "So what happened?" asked Diago, blankly.

  "Well, Rufius asked me to join him, to help him manipulate 
this woman into restoring her trust onto the city, whatever that 
meant. He said that he would even suffice for just the souls of him 
and me if nothing else could really be done. But he wasn't about to 
walk away from the secret of the world with nothing. I told him he 
was crazy and that he had better let the woman go immediately. 
But he was undeterred; there was a gleam in his eye that said he 
was sure of himself beyond those limits his mind had ever passed 
before. The speech began innocently enough. He talked to me 
about how I was different from everyone else I knew but him. He 
said I had the potential to become something great for the citizens; 
that if I accepted this new duty and helped him cure this girl that 
I'd help change everything that was wrong with the city for the 
better. This coming from a skinny teenager with a long knife in his 
belt.

  "Yet it had already stuck me that his account was exactly 
the kind of thing I had daydreamed of hearing from someone, 
someday. I had no doubts about the quality of its fantasy, but it still 
confused the hell out me for more than a few hours, these two 
waiting for me in that great empty room deep under the city, 
playing some little game. I said I wanted him to cut the woman 
down so that I could hear how she told the story, but he said that 
was against the rules. He alone could understand her words and 
that if any one else heard her speak it would be impossible for 
them to influence her in any way. He was the only one immune to 
her song. Again, all this sounded like the kind of rules that would 
hold true in a dream, but not here in reality. My judgment told in 
no uncertain terms not to trust him. So I insisted my request. He 
refused. I made a move for the winch, and without protest he put 
his dagger in my back.

  "I died."

  Blank stares.

  "You mean you almost died," said Karen.	

  "No," I said. "I mean he killed me. I died, that was the 
bitter end of it."

  "That's nonsense. You're not dead right now."

  I nodded. "You're right. I'm not." This was not shaping up 
to settle well, just as it never had with anyone who I had trusted 
enough to tell. "But I have been dead before. It's no kind of 
immortality. I just tend to reincarnate nearby for some reason. 
After Rufius stabbed me in the neck, I woke up naked in a 
dumpster about a half mile outside the History building. Obviously 
it was where Rufius had dumped me after doing whatever it was he 
ended up doing down there. The corpse of my old body was lying 
on top of me and that was what scared me the most. I can't 
remember if I looked in the eyes or not, but I knew it was me."

  "Wait a minute," Diago said as he stood up. "How long ago 
were you twenty three? I think that would be something that would 
stick in your mind. Why don't you remember?"

  "Because it happened near the last decade of the 
Technicization Age. That was a long time ago." Wind blew 
over a tree and directed a few leaves my way. "Though not much 
has changed around here since."

  Diago sat back down again and was silent. I had already 
told some of this to Zig the day before, so he was not quite as 
surprised. I still didn't want to turn toward Karen. 

  "So you have been alive during all that time?" Diago said.

  "Off and on," I said. "After I woke, I had completely 
forgotten  who I was or where I lived. Every time I die, my mind 
gets either partially or fully wiped clean, like it's starting over. So I 
stole some clothes, found a job, and put everything else behind me. 
I assumed I had some kind of mental disorder which I kept strictly 
to myself so as not to end up in the hands of the Institute of Mental 
Health Research quacks. I have done it many times since."

  "Ah, but your fingerprints would have gotten scanned when 
you went to get a new driver's license. It would have matched up 
with your previous one and then the cops would know."

  "No, my body also changes to fit my surroundings. I looked 
ten years older and pretty different. The finger prints, retinal 
patterns, all that had changed too. I fit so perfectly into my new life 
that I lost interest in asking why my memories were cloudy at best. 
Like before, my only memories of a childhood were images of a 
dark, rainy city. Everyone has those; nothing to work with. Since I 
barely aged at all, I lived as 'Ganes Christiansen, the engineer' for 
years until I was killed in a motorcycle accident. I woke up a few 
days later and started it all over again. It's easy to get used to 
anything when you can't remember the last time it happened."

  Diago spoke up again. "Screw-Rick, Ganes whatever, I'm 
not stupid. The Gold Cup driver I worked for who was sent to 
prison for patricide was not the same one that reemerged four years 
ago. I knew something was different, but since you looked and 
acted like him, I chalked it up to drug use or too much time in the 
hole. Deep down I knew, though, because you didn't drive the 
same. That you were able to drive at all without years of practice is 
unbelievable."

  "Well it wasn't entirely my fault. I've been racing cyc's 
since before I ever joined the Special Forces. Motorcycles are a lot 
like six-wheelers in theory at least. But cars handle less 
responsively which is why I kept hitting things during my first 
week back. I had been convinced that I was Screw the ex-
champion, so it baffled me when I did so poorly. Even though I 
almost won that last one."

  Diago shook his head and stood up again. 

  "Well I think you're crazy." 

  He walked back inside and shut the door behind him. Zig 
and I watched him go and then looked back at each other.

  "Now the whole thing with finding two of you in the 
merusion chamber in Ventiss makes more sense," Zig said. "How 
come you didn't lose your memory after that?"
 
  "I did. It usually takes at around three days to get a new 
body after death. I was unconscious during all that time you and 
Linn were escaping, because my brain was still warm gooey mush. 
Much later, when I woke up in a mirrored cell in the Apothecary, I 
didn't know who I was. Alethea knocked a lot of it straight in my 
head, and then so did White right before we killed him."

  "Before I killed him."

  "Whatever. The point is that for the maybe the first time 
ever I'm able to remember most if not all of my existence. Now is 
my best chance to find out what's wrong with me, and why Rufius 
is the only other person who can do it too."

  "That was my other question that never seems to get 
answered. Just how deeply is Rufius involved in this? How well do 
you two know each other?"

  "Its strange, Rufius and I go way back. He has always been 
there; when I was a lowly bus driver and he was a Director. Or 
when I was a gang boy, and he ran the Special Forces. He's always 
there living better than I am, with a higher job and that incredible 
talent of his. He never once told me why he came to hate me so 
much. But he does, so we meet every ten or fifteen years and one 
of us always rides home in a body bag."

  "How many times has he killed you?"

  "Oh, a little less than thirty."

  "And vice versa?"

  "Once."

  Zig snorted. "Once?! That's it? I thought you knew how to 
play his game!"

  "I do, but that's not all there is to it. For most of that time, 
he had psionics and I didn't. He killed me once about a hundred 
and fifty years ago by shoving a truck axle down my throat. It did 
the job pretty quick."

  "But you got him once too, right?"

  "It was more his fault than mine. I tricked him into 
following me through a three story house that my friends blew up 
with a bathtub full of napalm and myrrh. He doesn't deal well with 
myrrh for some reason. But that was the last time I even stood a 
chance. There have been a few times over the last century when he 
just crushed me with his power from a quarter of a mile away. Let 
me tell you, it makes you learn to seize the moment."

  "Then why don't you just find him first, and kill him in his 
sleep?"

  "Because he doesn't sleep anymore. Or eat or breathe. Like 
White, the inside of his body is ninety-nine percent iron. Using 
psionics is a nuclear process that operates at the expense of your 
own cells. Dully radioactive iron in the form of chain links is the 
waste product. When all the tissue is used up, the only way to stay 
alive is by using large amounts of power and will. The chains go 
away when he dies, but he doesn't die often. Maybe three or four 
times ever to my knowledge."

  "So Rufius was the first person ever to have the power?"

  "As far as I know. Until he and White developed merusion 
not too long ago, I had never tasted it myself. Of course I was one 
of their first patients."

  "Why?"

  "Because, as White said the night before last, I worked 
directly under Rufius in my short life right before 'Screwtape.' I 
was newly incarnated and I didn't realize who the old man was for 
several years. But for some reason he had decided to be there as 
soon as I awakened, and took me in under his wing right away. He 
made up stories about our intertwining pasts to settle my curiosity. 
I was lost in the maze of my own blank mind and was so eager to 
believe in someone strong like him at the time. So he, White, and I 
worked on testing merusion on criminals underground. The work 
was awful to me, but for some reason, possibly loyalty, I stayed. A 
lot of it is very vague."

  "What did they finally do to you?"

  "Killed me again," I said flatly. "I may have had an idea 
that it was coming too. White stuck a few of his nails through my 
ear; they needed me fresh so I would fit easily into the Screw 
persona. Chris was also with us at the time, but he was told they 
just erased my memory somehow. He handled my training since I 
had forgotten a lot, while Wells took care of the dirty jobs, like 
'convincing' my parole officer to plead my case to the board. They 
must have set it all up well, because until a week ago I had no idea. 

  "All that bullshit about my parents were actually this man 
Screw's parents, but it  seemed good to me. He was a real man, a 
real racer with a real patricide, though he's probably long dead in 
the hole by now. I took his meager remaining life from him. But I 
guess the old men idealized the mother/father thing too much and 
it got me thinking." I sighed and felt bad. "They had just mixed 
together every memory I ever had of childhood with some recent 
facts about Screw's family and friends and made up a single story. 
One big tapestry with only a single thing I could take away from it, 
to learn psionics naturally and then go find Rufius."

  "And this didn't seem at all unnatural to you?"

  "Hey, the chance forget about all the horrible things I had 
recently been involved in made me willing to volunteer. I admitted 
to them all the kind of things I knew I would be willing to believe 
and they used them judiciously. White said I begged him for it 
after the end of the experiments, and it wouldn't really surprise me. 
Pretty fucking weak if you ask me."

  Zig said, "So does this mean that even after we grab 
Alethea, you and Rufius still need to meet each other?"

  "I don't know. He has me so outmatched right now that it 
wouldn't even be a contest. I'm certainly not going to be the one to 
attack him first. But I do need to fill the gaps in my past. After that, 
hell, I'll do my best to save some civilians if I can. The city's been 
our home for so long I couldn't help but grow attached, even to the 
bad parts. Especially the bad parts, really. They stick out in my 
memories the most. It just depends on what his deal is and what I 
can do about it."

  "I hear you. This whole Quentin Tarantino does The 
Wizard of Oz thing isn't beyond me. For now at least."

  "Thank you. Seriously." I said.

  Diago's young assistant walked up to where the three of us 
were gathered and said, "Zig? There's a phone call for you inside." 
He stood up. "Who is it?"

  "Says his name is Mad Dog. He'll spot you the sixteen g's, 
but he wants twenty-five by next Monday."

  "What?! Twenty-five thousand bucks? That's insane!"

  "He also mentioned something about a couple of tickets to 
next year's smoketoberfest."

  "Where's the phone?"

  Zig took another look at me, ran back inside, and shut the 
door behind him. I laughed. At least he had his priorities straight. I 
turned back to Karen who was now the only one left with me on 
the patio. 

  At least she wasn't giving me the glare that Alethea gave 
the last time I talked about my past. Karen was definitely another 
person altogether. I waited for her to break the silence but she 
didn't. This must have been the most uncomfortable forty-five 
minutes of her life. I didn't know what to say at all.
So for the moment we sat in the cool air and wondered 
what all this ought to change.







-------
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next time: film noir


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