DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THREE

When she awoke the sunlight had not yet slithered in. I had wanted to move the dead body away but it seemed I was Black's only support. Eventually two denizens of the pit gingerly came up to the gantry, to inqure as to my health. Itold them I had tamed the beast and with shrugs they carried the dead guy down to the dancefloor.
They were on him like jackals, jacket and jeans hand-me-downs, shoes to the solo vulture who swoops in between the chittering swarming women stripping and arguing.
By the time the ants had finished feeding on the dollop of ice-cream I felt sick and depressed to the marrow.
These disciples around me, so efficient in their faith. Yahweh we are all animals, just the thin blanket of civilisation forced around us at birth. Just a sheet of lies, taken away so easily.
Black was awake and sprang from my shoulder. Mopping the siliva from her jaw she looked around despondantly.
"Tell me it's morning. " she growled. Now she was filled with colour, her pearl-white skin flushed red, her blank voice now resonant with supressed emotion.
"It's not even sunrise. "
She wavered a little on the rafter and steadied herself, looking down on to the mixed crowd of sleepers and jackals below.
"A moment of clarity. Won't last long. " She grinned for a split second. "Get out of here Vecchi I have to be alone tonight. "
"No. Tell me what's wrong. "
She looked right at me then with her burning gaze and again grinned for a microsecond. A mental calculation clicked inside her.
"I'll tell you something, " she said drunkenly, "I'll trade you though. You tell me something in return? "
"What do you want to know?"
"In return for a bit of my history you can tell me... tell me what it was like to be dead. "
By the Empress she was serious. I could write a huge book all about death; every page would be blank.
"I don't know if thats possible. " I told her after some consideration.
It wasn't that I didn't want to pour my heart out on the subject, it's just that there were no words in any language I knew to get the concepts through.
"Did you see a light? " Black asked. "Like you hear about from those people who go dead for minutes? "
"I was dead for days. There was no light. I'd like to fully tell you. Maybe I could write it down easier."
"In that diary you keep in your head. "
"I suppose so," I agreed, my mind still swirling from just thinking about death. "I swear I'll explain it to you Blacky. "
"Tell me something now. " she demanded. Her voice was becoming blank again. A thought came to me, a reflection of Nokume's talk of thermodynamics.
"I became a singularity existing only in the future. "
She managed a mocking stare. That probably came out sounding overly pretencious.
"Thats it? " she sneered.
"Part of it. I know this too. For all our pretence of self-awareness and spirituality, we all just boil down to lumps of matter. It sounds like gibberish but I remember... that is to say, although I no longer existed and felt nothing there was maybe something like a projection of me... it all just boils down to lumps of matter; I had dissolved into some state just a cycle ahead in the phase-space... you know how pseudo-data feedback works... "
"Vecchi you're waffling. Just shut up. " Black whispered in my ear. "Collect your thoughts when you have a moment. I really would like to hear about your experience but I guess you need to philosophise a little more. "
I nodded, exasperated. She is right, I can't believe I haven't spared any thought to such a major personal event. I will approach the subject again when I have a quiet moment job-wise.
Black had taken her cheap thin canteen from her overcoat, splashed a little water on her face and pushed her hair back.
"Here is something equally obscure about myself. " she eventually said, and I could see more mental switches behind those fervid eyes. I could tell her colour was fading more now, back into the state which worried me so.
I could handle this Black, this whispering grinning demanding Black. But that woman I had met hours before... the blank one who had claimed the taking life so matter-of-factly... I can't deal with that stranger.
"Black is my name. Those girls who pick a street name and insist on it being used? Years ago I knew a girl called Black. Really called Becky Jute. 'Call me Black,' she'd demand. Why? 'Because my soul is pitch.' Right, so, her pimp started calling me Black instead just to piss her off. Why? 'Because her hair is black.' So everyone calls me Black. Becky carried on wearing those dark contact lenses though and changed to Lotus. As in Black Lotus the marasmus flower. The one that only pops up every thirty years on Jhenge. She thought that was really cool. And here's me called Black because I've got black hair. So profound. "
The speech stopped half-way. By now her voice had become devoid of emotion once again. It all sounded like another of her deliberate diversions, but her vacant straightforwardness belied this nature. Somehow it was a sincere personal commentry.
She moved; slipped down from the rafter and crouched down low, a little stiff from sitting up there for so long. She was biting down on her hand, hard.
"Go away now. " she said, muffled. I knew there was nothing I could do now so I left into the night, my insides gnawing at me, it felt so bad to turn my back on her. Maybe later she would be screaming, but at least to scream is to live.

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY

The marasmus plant goes brown and slushy into a putrescent gunge every Jhengian autumn, an event hidden from the colonial recruitment ads.
I have heard of the stench of plastic and car interiors and all things fake that the rot sends across the seas, driving tourists away to the heartland.
The ring islanders gather it, refine it into marasmusine, and the corporations smuggle it back to Earth; it is a component in some combat drugs.
Inject it with metasterol and develope delusions of vampirism.
Dissolve it with lysergic acid diethylamide for the psyche cartography phenomenon.
Rub it into the roof of your mouth, rub it deep into your eyes, it tastes and looks like the stop-start dreams that repeat in your mind when you get the 24 hour bug.
You know, when you were thirteen at home on the couch watching the gogglebox because you can't read or sleep or draw or think and your skin shivers cold then sweats hot.
And then at night... the concepts repeat stop-start at their mercy unable to let any other thoughts into consciousness.
Time bounces around. You're in the time phase-space loop thing.
You're a living PDF.
Thats what marasmusine does to you.
It's the plastic fever.
It's the illegal key to time.
Take it with twister pills and your brain becomes an arcade machine the addiction comes from trying to get to the next level.
Take it with cannabis or Tabacchohol or sensitiser of your choice bzzzzt; incompatability error, can't articulate the emotionless, your left and right brain stop talking and your front and back lobes tangle around one another trying to find an answer.
So the marasmus plants seed into their own rot, grow again, rot again. They have little white flowers with eight petals that the arghopods find so interesting and then every thirty (of their) years there's this black lotus.
Doesn't fit into the life cycle and the bugs avoid it.
Those crazy funster biologists say there's a mutagen in the beaches, triggered off by the motion of the sun.

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY

The regency police arrested me today.
The nightmare scenario; you can only take so many precautions.
One day you're gonna leave a fingerprint under a chair or fail to EMP the security cameras correctly.
Well, yeah, most areas the private policing agencies are in league with my employers so you can spray the red around and leave with minimal fuss.
Regency police though... always poking around.
Two of them hussled me into their city-camo Lihtan. The ballistic cloth uniforms squeaked as they slide in, just the way those fetishists like it.
"What? Forensics scanned me out huh? " I test them. Nightmare scenario, Nylell-Darmen don't pull you out anymore, their idea of natural selection, eliminating those who have the fault of being unlucky.
In the back seat I stare at the officer's necks through the grill.
It's not often my stomach goes roller coaster.
In fact the last time was that time... the punch in the gut moment when my orders came through with the corporations designs on Himsa Numen.
Thinking back to that sickening moment, my current situation seemed less desperate and I calmed down a little.
They test me in return with silence.
"Hello? Scanned? " I repeat.
"No, Vice. " The driving officer turned and smiled knowingly at me. Big gnarled nose filled his face, little dots for eyes. His smarts were behind his smile. Bet he got through academy with that smile.
The tag on his shoulder read 'Sergeant Dink'.
"I have a prescription for marasmusine. Medical, you know. "
"Not narcotics. Media. " Dink nodded, and turned back to the controls to take off. The the ground fell away, there's no lurch with these flights. Looking out of the window, the milk bar became a toy town building.
"Media, that is optical media," barked out the other officer, "That is optical media for entertainment perposes. Thought it would be fun to peddle murder flicks to little children eh? Get turned on by watching men get minced eh? "
Oh, I had forgotten about that. At least I wasn't featured on screen in the stupid thing.
My distributor must have ratted me out.
Should I roll on innocent, or get it over and done with?
How do you play the police game? I winged it.
"Yahweh that was all special effects, just a joke you know?"
Dink shrugged. "Composition without a license at best for you. Accessory to murder maybe. " I could see his smugness reflected in the overhead mirror.
They get bonuses or something for amoral rectification procedures as apposed to, say, arresting an armed robber. Regency logic; a robber commits a crime for the money, and thus society is to blame.
Unregistered composition on the other hand is base immorality and the penalties are stiffer.
I get caught up in the war against evil.
"Do you think I am evil? " I ask Dink when we hit the station.
He just sighs at me with distaste and locks me in the white padded holding pen.
Smell of dried glue on fingers.
Sitting upright on the bunk a shabbily dressed caucasian slips into old age.
Left arm missing from the elbow down, has been replaced with a cheap grabber on the end of a steel rod.
The two fingered grabber clacks open and closed in a nervous twitch, drumming out a sound like chattering teeth.
Through thick bifocals he looks at me apologetically.
The ceiling mounted taser tracks the arm, the automa brain ready for any suprises.
"We're not evil are we? " I ask him. "We have not committed crimes against humanity. We're just minding our own business, why can't the law do the same? "
The old man lets out a nasal sigh with an irritating rasp. I see his mind reering up for a reply. With short breathy sentences he tells me of his crime...

I made my phone call and got Pete to bail me out as quickly as humanly possible.
Regency trial in three days. Pete wants to be a character witness so I say okay.
Dink returns my keys, wallet, marasmusine canisters, collection of unfilled bureaucratic forms but pistola has been confiscated.
Firing pin filed clean so they can't do much to connect me.
Through the cell window I wave to the old man, but he's still talking to the spot where I had stood.

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO

The affair is being handled by ProTrial.
I understand their operations are broadcast across their gogglebox net; viewers can dial in their jury vote and explore evidence multimedia.
"Putting Criminal Judgement In The Hands Of The Public - Where It Belongs."
At least for those who continue to pay the subscription.
It's sick interactive entertainment.
The concept of thousands of bored potato couches delving into my history (fortunately edited by higher forces) and deciding my fate on a lager stained whim sends me into shudders of depression.

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX

Massively unfair fine that the corp will not provide for.
I refused to do community service as this involves sick stuff like removing graffiti or poetry writing for regency publications (peaked my interest but found out you have to write about our glorious Empress or beautiful sunsets or the magnificence of our heratige or some other vile propaganda.)
I'd rather get back to delivering grey cargo corpses.
"You know why they wear sunglasses don't you?" I was muttering to Pete.
Earlier: Red Rogue whatserface encountered at tram station, still wearing little round tinted glasses. She had slipped them down her nose and stared right at me through the crowd; a flesh red particle obeying brownian motion in the backdrop of blue-grey invisible commuters. Always a good idea to follow the flow at stations rather than stare out an opponent. She was bounced here and there and lost sight of me as the tram doors closed.
"Because sunglasses look cool? " Pete guessed.
"It's a security blanket. It's something to hide behind. Everyone's got one. "
I pointed to his belt pouch, slung at his side. As usual Pete had his hand shoved in it.
"You clutch at the hearse keys you see. Subconscious. "
He twitched and retrieved his fist.
"Suppose so. I feel lost when I don't have me keys on me. Never mind all this, lets get moving man. "
Oh, he wanted to get down to the milk bar; they were showing some important football match or other and he followed the 'sport' religiously.
Pete is incredibly stupid and will soon die.
Slow torture is preferable to a conversation about sport, so I continue on the original subject. "I have a friend, she wears a world war two overcoat no matter the weather... thats her security blanket to hide behind. "
"You like all that psychology shit don't you? " Pete grunted. "What's your point?"
Despite all his inane conversations about philosophy and religion, he feigns ignorance when it comes to discussing the physical mind.
I guess it's too close to the bone for him. I cut to the chase.
"I want to know my hiding place. Where is my insecurity? What do I have to comfort myself?"
"Probably all the contract killing you do. " he grinned cruelly.
"I can't believe that. I'm not that dead inside. Am I? "
The tram whined to a stop, releasing the salty smell of braking fluid. The interruption allowed Pete get away without answering.

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED FIFTY

Burchack sprawls uncivilised on the fading couch, half watching an unimaginative soap opera. As I tumble my coat through the bedroom door, his eyes peer down to a men's magazine flapped out on his trim belly.
"Your memories of your first kiss tell you how good you are in bed, " he slurrs with some amusement to himself, but seems to want a response.
I'm not sure who is more of a pleb bewteen Burchack and Pete.
"Well huh." My work-mate has broader tastes, but Burchack is more accepting towards the unfamiliar.
However, both are trapped by gullibility.
My bedroom is situated adjacent to an external duct, and so ceilings twice as tall.
A domicile loftier than it is wide may contribute somewhat to wards my apparently twisted view of life.
Perspective.
I gather last night's pill shells and canisters, drop them into the burner and hang up the thick window blanket.
Sunlight so dangerous these days.
The room dims in otherworldly tangerine glow.
I hear Burchack belching in the living room.
The ache goes from my legs as I stretch luxuriously on the mattress.

Daydream.
In the back of my mind I am eighteen again.
The green belts have not yet been swallowed, there is a solid grey mist on the horizon, silver-lined clouds are slightly tainted with smog.
Suburbia spreads for miles around, it feels like flat residential drab will cover everything forever.
A lack of self-knowledge dulls my mind, like I am working towards some summit where I can look back and think 'But that was not me... I have only come into existance now, as I have reached this peak.'
Except, of course, there is always a new mountain on the horizon.
That first peak, love maybe, the first step of self-awareness.
Then onwards to some kind of spiritual enlightenment literally a new person.
After that? A slip and a fall and my sentience crumbles; that third summit is never reached.
My age cheating the path.
My youth physically and emotionally a seperate entity.
The memory continues to unfold.

Money did not seem to be a prerequisite for living, and thus aquiring a job seemed ludicrous.
Then six months after quitting college, I was peddling stolen mind archives to support a serious MUD addiction (this was before saturation marketing of commercial pills).
I would spend hours sitting on the warehouse roof, looking up to the sun with my eyes shut, fascinated by the warm pink of my eyelids and the shadows flitting across as lihtans passed above.
Another night under corrigated aluminium, sleeping my eyes shut but ears like a switchblade, I still see shadows flitting across my eyelids in dark.
Soon distressed by noise.
A slight wimpering, shuffling, and I can't hide under the bedcovers any longer.
Barefoot and stimmed I hunt for the source of the disturbance through the bland plastic storage crates.
Over there! On the warehouse ramp, in the light of a broken halogen, a dribbling trail of opaque liquid, I follow to the office door and see her...

Alien messiah disguised in human form. She is cowering in the corner of the closet-like low-floored room, scared wild eyes.
Small, athletic build.
Naked, but covered with thick knotted fur, except on the upper body.
She is bleeding heavily from no apparent wound.
Blood on her abdomen and legs.
She looks up at me, confused, opens her mouth to speak, but more blood spills from her throat, dark almost black red, glistening and viscous.
From her pleading face it seems this is her first experience of human physical pain.
This was my first contact with an assan.
"Move away, you there." a sharpened female voice above and behind.
Sitting crosslegged on a crate, a greyscale woman looks on with relaxed china-doll features. Her steel high-fashion jacket shimmers with deep texture; a customer mayber? Not the police.
Nevertheless I step away from the dying creature.
It gave a little cough-sob of sudden lost hope.
"You are dreaming, this is not happening." the shiny woman says, the words pouring from her mouth, a monotone waterfall.
A dream? I knew dream from wake.
The high-strung cold night air, the faint taste of bananas from the crates, the pockmarked concrete under my scabby feet, the slow sharp throb of stim... this was happening.
"What's going on? Are you here to buy?" I asked her, my mouth betraying me.
Speech does that, acting from the nerves instead of the mind.
'What is that thing?' I was screaming inside.
"Look at it dying." she said. "An assan immigrant looking for adventure only to find pain. The reason for her death exists as a composite encoded thought pattern divided between myself and many others like me. I don't even know part of the reason. Does that make her death meaningless?"
"Stop... just stop... get out of here before I call my boss. " I was stumbling backwards to my bed. I had a cell phone somewhere.
She came down from her perch and towards me.
The black shadows in her hands and face and hair were flicking horizontally like a corrupted image file or a bad TV reception.
The shade tugging at her, pulling her away, or maybe... the other way round.
She strode up to me, choking my vision.
I saw her face now, eyes and mouth filling her oval pearl face in an amused snarl.
"Tell me, " she continued, her black-lipped mouth a few inches away from mine. "Why do you think the Regency was established? " No breath on my face.
Had she really asked me that? A macabre quiz show. Answer or die! Answer or die! Something said inside of me.
I couldn't remember, school history lessons fade into grey, should have kept current affairs in mind...
I'm shifting backwards but she keeps our noses touching.
"Regency... ah... unified worlds... external threat... a virus! That was it. The Empress started a control net to protect a against virus."
"A virus... so that is what we are being called now. "
Her lips met mine, scalding hot and with the impact of a million beautiful light particles.
And then the shadows took her. Or she took the shadows.
I almost gagged in revulsion.
The next day I decided to quit the peddling and got scutwork at a certain major pharmacutical corporation.
The MUD withdrawl symtoms eventually went; I felt I had broken free from commercial brainwashing and concequently became cynical and alone.
The first peak.
The first level of awareness.
I think maybe I saw the virus woman again a few years later, or is that memory doubling back?
A few years later, combat training sharpening my wits, I saw her a few snapshots of time in a doorway, white frame, in the slums of Newtower, looking down at her feet.
Her eyes in the corrupted shadow, creases of rapid aging deepening as she smirks. Older.. maybe ten years. A syndrome of some sort?
A smell of burning sugar and she is gone.
I never saw her again.
Anyway, that was my first kiss.
What does it say about that in your magazine, Burchack?

DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND FOURTY

I see the 'bodyguard' Red Rogue everywhere. She is following me,
I'm sure. Reflected in the mirrored escalator in the shopping arcade, a glimpse
of her half-pop jacket before it slips round a high-street corner, a wad of well
chewed gum stuck to the rivets outside my apartment. Dink too... his Lihtan
(registration number 030-45A To Protect And Serve) circles over me two or
three times a day. They know, they know! I take sanctuary in Black's com
pany, who also seems to be hanging around more than usual since the trial.
I'm some kind of magnet at the moment. She is struggling on as normal, as if
that night had never happened.
"You're paranoid. " she says insensitively. She leans over to slip a
few notes into my shirt pocket, then drums her fingers on the cafe table. She's
back on the marasmusine, then. I roll a canister over to her, making a trail
through spilt droplets of milk.
"No more than most people. I just have to be careful because of my
job. I tell you, when I got arrested I thought I was finished. You must know
what that's like. "
Slipping around the conversation again, Blacky tells me:
"I was pregnant. Over a period of time, my smooth pot belly became
more lumpy and heavy. Soon the skin becomes stretched thin. Something
utterly mishaped in my body pressed tight against the flesh, so heavy it
sagged down to my thighs. I had to hold the thing in my hands in case the
weight tore my womb. One day, I woke to find the skin stretched so tight it
was transparent, blood vessels criss crossing through the flesh. I could see
through... looked like a plastic bag filled with miscallanious offal rather than an
unborn child. I felt it kicking and squirming, so heavy like my body was about
to burst and splatter the thing over the floor. I was rushed to the hospital. By
Caesarean section, the doctors calmly brought the monstrosity into the world.
When I regained consciousness, my child was a beautiful baby girl. Happi
ness overcame me, tears and all, holding the child in my arms. I felt so utterly
complete for the first time in my life.
"One day as I watched my girl crawl around happily, I had a vision
into the future. My girl is a teenager. She is wearing jeans, sport jacket and is
generally being an increadible mundane. She will live her life like most stupid
people in this town, never achieving anything and becoming a single parent by
nineteen years of age. I realised that my first experience of the child was a
truer view than the beautiful baby girl before me. The horrific parasite. The
misshapen squirming bag of offal living inside my body.
"In my vision, my teenage daugher was humming a catchy six note
tune. "
I became aware of the silence; I hadn't expected Black to stop
speaking at that point. She gazed at me without expression, it seemed like
she was continuing her monologue inside her head, mouth disengaged.
"Black, were you really pregnant? I think you're making it up. You
haven't got a child. " She's speaking in metaphores again.
"I suppose it's entirely possible I have a child, what does it matter?"
Black said. I nervously put my finger to my temple. Black's lips shifted to one
side in thought, then she took my hand in hers and slipped it under her over
coat. Beneath the thin vest, her warm abdomen was distinctly pot-bellied. Not
round enough to be noticed whilst she wore her thick coat, but nevertheless
she... I was dumbfounded, for a few minutes not being able to link the concept
of pregnancy with Black. I pulled my hand away.
"Who..." I began.
"No-one you know." she interrupted. "He was a good man but no
longer... around." She was struggling to keep a calm poise. "Before you say
anything, I don't want your sympathy or congratulations."
"You didn't want me to react to this?" I almost laughed.
"I just wanted you to know before it became obvious."
"So you're keeping it... him. Her?"
"I don't know yet."
About keeping the baby or about the gender? I kept quiet, I didn't
want to pessure Black. There; I had thought the word... 'baby'. The word al
most scared me. A child... A dream I had maybe. Black's face suddenly lit up.
"You're going to be an uncle. Be happy." she said. That was quite a
switch.
"If you want me to be happy, I'll be happy." I couldn't smile, so I
caressed her pretty hands. We sat at that milk table until it was time for her to
leave, and I had eventually accepted the idea of this new life.
"I'll see you later, okay?" Black pulled on her overcoat and started to
leave the bar.
"Take that marasmusine neat. No drugs, okay? No real drugs, I
mean." I said quietly to her. She nodded. All of a sudden, a question came to
me, and I surprised myself with it's complete unrelation to Black's confession.
The question had been annoying me since my recent nostalgia.
"Black... " I called. She turned. "Do you remember why the Regency
was set up? "
"Yeah, they said it was to control the spread of a virus. Must be
nearly a hundred years ago now. Everyone forgets about it."
"Ah... that's what I remembered too. "
"Of course the real reason was because they needed an excuse to
dominate all those other races. I bet there isn't even an Empress at all. "
As she left, a young man at a nearby table laughed in agreement.


DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE

A nine thirty a.m. call sent me back to the government building with
the black room. No Doctor; I am alone with the cold woman. She wears an
electric blue full body business suit, an impeccable fit and undoubtably lined
with ballistic weave. Her body still as lithe as before, she takes a seat directly
opposite me at the matt black table. She's too much in touch with her sur
roundings to be a robot... I hear they deliberatly program in little twitches and
ungraceful glitches. She pushes a clipboard to me, on it a form to be filled.
Yahweh to all this.
"Can you tell me your name, please?" I ask politely.
> "Please don't converse, simply fill in the questionnaire. " she says,
lips making short, precise movements.
"Then I shall call you Catherine. " I decide. Sometimes I really tire of
these faceless powers-that-be. Her icey eyes bore into me.
"I am not to be called at all. Now answer the questions or I shall use
a more time-consuming method." Well, it was too much to hope for. I look
down at the sheet. Psychology questions. Most related to dreams and desires,
uncomplicated yet more specific (some obscure) than questions on other
psychology tests I have seen.
"I'd like to know what this is for. " I ask. I could be throwing stones in
a glass cage here, they must really disapprove of unauthorised questions
thrown back at them.
"Of course you would like to know. You're obedient but not blindly
so. Were you just a corporate slave, you wouldn't be sitting on that highly
expensive seat. The questionnaire is to determine if you would be a suitable
candidate for a further process related to your ressurection. "
Ah-ha.
"Candidacy implies there are others in a similar situation to me."
"It implies your fate has not yet been decided, and will depend on
your attitude. Answer the questions. Lie if you want, it is all taken into account.
It is to your advantage to be honest, however. Be thorough."
There isn't a trace of impatience in her. I could play this game all
morning. Instead I pick up the hard pencil and study the questions. Yahweh, I
may as well give them what's in my head.
What is your sexual preference? I write 'None.' After some thought, I
add; 'In death, some things get left behind.' A few minutes later, my mind
flashes back to Himsa, so I write 'Dormant heterosexuality.'
Have you ever dreamt about your own death? Please specify if these
dreams were prior or after your resurrection. I begin to write about my recent
dream, then curse and scribble it out. I don't want to implicate Black in any of
this. I rattled the pencil in my teeth until I remembered something else. 'When
I was eleven I dreamt that my friends and I escaped from school in the form of
an adventuring expedition, into the fertile wasteland nearby (a great place to
play during my childhood but was eventually bulldozed and turned into a bland
housing estate.) In a field of tall hay, we were ambushed and I was struck in
the chest by several arrows. A girl named Leanne tried to save me with open
heart surgery, there in the field. I died with my heart in her hands, watching
the cardioscope go flatline. Funnily enough, she resurrected me as a robot. I
looked in a mirror, but what looked back was so horrific that the shock woke
me up.'
"They'll love that one." I say quietly.


DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY

In the afternoon, the air pressure became almost crushing, sending
car alarms crying one by one down the streets. The atmospheric tension
made the city life irritable, waiting for a crash of lightning to break the strain.
Burchack had sat, glumly munching breakfast, ready to snap at the slightest
indescretion as I left the apartment. Pete drove the sluggish hearse through
the streets without his usual precision, muttering bad words. Even Black
couldn't stand the pressure, unwisely drowning her prenatal misery in pills and
tabacohol at the milk bar. The city was brought to the brink of anarchy; the
longer the thunderstorm hid in that grey blanket of cloud, the greater grew the
chance of something else snapping.
Red Rogue attacked in Little London, striding up to me as I
slouched on a park bench. Her plastic coated arm snatched out, not quite the
lightning I was expecting, and clutched my hair to pull me up. Half standing, I
sent the back of my hand weightily against her face, sending those stupid
shades arching to the gravel. She backed away a little, massaging her jaw.
"My, so you do have eyes after all." I said. They were an unspecial
grey-blue colour. She had allowed vanity to conceal her, like almost everyone
in this world.
"I'm going to hospitalise you. " she hissed falling into a fighting
stance. Capoeira, I think.
"Look, woman," I explained, "I apologised already. Go and beat up
Aaeron Nokume. Surely you can't be angry over loosing that job when there
are so many people hiring bodyguards."
"I want to hurt you." Red smiles.
"If you're taking this personally then you subconsciously have a
problem with yourself."
Lightning again, to my stomach. Winded, I drop back to the bench.
No time to recover, another strike to my cheek bone. Blood filled up the vision
in my left eye. I watch stunned as she escalated the energy in her stance,
then kicked the flat of her boot into my sternum. The park bench toppled back
wards and I lost any sense of orientation; my legs, my coat, the grass and the
bench all a broken jigsaw. In one piece, that of the sky, the face of Red slid
into view, looking down with amusement.
"You corporate grey-op lackies are shit, really. I thought you were
supposed to be hot stuff in combat. Get up."
I got to my knees, blades of grass sticking to my side. Without paus
ing to wipe the blood away, I fluidly drew the IguanaTech from my spring
pocket holster, pulled the trigger and vapourised Red's right hand. Her mouth
became a small circle of astonishment.
"I'm a little rusty, okay?" I explained. Flechette wound messy, a
contrast to the usual cauterised cop party gunwound. Three seconds later,
Red registered the sting and clasped her ragged wrist, a red mist settling onto
our coats and the grass.
"Hand..." she almost giggled, stepping back and forth, undecided
between attacking and fleeing. The gun guiltfully went away as I straightened
myself out.
"Um. Sorry. " I continue to explain. "I haven't got anything against
you personally. I wish you'd just leave me alone. Was that an original hand?
Sorry. What a mess. I'll call an ambulance."
Why am I cold towards my corporately contracted enemies, and yet
condescending towards this woman? I feel that a artificially induced personal
ity has been layered atop my original feelings, one way or another. Yah, Para
noia. The uncertain situation was resolved when Red eventually fled screech
ing curses.


DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT

"I'm basically a gentle man." Aaeron insists as we have supper at
Pete's place. "I rebel with words rather than actions. I'm open to all thoughts,
scientific or otherwise."
"Sometimes you've got to hit people to make them listen." Pete
pointed out with some irritation. "You like to hit things, don't you Vecchi?
That's your job, innit."
"I don't know. Maybe. " I reply quietly. "Deep down I suppose. But I
want to direct violence towards... "
"See?" Pete interrupts.
"... myself rather than others." I finish but no-one listens.
Too much wine; Peter wants to discuss God - the only explination of
life he can comprehend. Aaeron wants to discuss any theory or system he has
read about but mostly to sound intellectual rather than to actually understand
them.
"You talk about all these theories." Pete says. "Although most of
them are conflict with one another. Isn't there anything you actually believe in?
Neo-Judaism seems to have all the answers I need."
"A few months ago you were talking about reincarnation." I remind
him, picking bits of chicken from between my teeth. I've eaten my fill, I shall
leave before the conversation developes inane tendencies. Pete glowers.
"Well, you know. Religeon in general. People must have souls,
right?"
Aaeron sits back on the couch with a belly-satisfied yawn. The fre
quency of his voice has plunged, surgery effected larynx. Is he working on
becoming Zeroed? Fingerprints, epidermis, retina print... He's staying here at
the apartment until they are all changed. The police must really want him.
"Souls? Maybe. " Aaeron says. Another pseudo-intellectual com
ment approaching. "It's just a metaphore for inspiration, I suppose."





DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN

Asklyuum; A bright yellow plastic door, the yin and yang symbol
etched in abstraction. Nokume Aaeron is here replaying the conversation. His
bandages unravel twistwise and beneath he has ebony pigmentation with the
raw texture of fresh skin. The gibberish he told me yesterday is being an
nounced to the R&D chief of the Nylell-Darmen corporation.
"The major limitation in the use of artificial intelligence is the binary
system all electronic computers use. ON / OFF switches impose a discreet
and static structure that can never emulate sentience, dispite all your complex
paralell computing."
The R&D chief listens with interest. I try to shout "Don't listen to this
man... He just picks out fancy phrases from textbooks. Don't be taken in by his
cut-and-paste scientific gobbledegook!" (This being a dream he, of course,
ignored me.) The incarnation of Nokume continued.
"Here you see my proposition for a new electronic strucutre that
allows for dynamic ON and dynamic OFF as an addition to the standard bi
nary. The permutation of these four elements allows for a true thinking ma
chine. The simulation you see here is, however, running on a common or
garden computer so please note this is a virtual intelligence rather than an
artificial intelligence, ha ha ha."
Yahweh! What rubbish! I remind myself this is a dream. This is my
own mind warping what I had heard Nokume say. Better to be judgemental of
my own nonsense that other peoples nonsense. The figure of Nokume was
now a strange Nokume and Pete Ripley mix; the two men like layers of ac
etate although still a single entity. Now less talkative and passive, becoming
increasingly physical in communication, the hybrid becomes more aggresive.
"Don't you see?" he shouts to the chief, arms waving, "I think it will
be a great product. Element grid lifeform multiple page book! Eart Fir Wate
Ai!"
Calm Nokume and agressive Pete seperate and fold inwards. The
door closes, a hardback cover. Again, a sense of solidification, a sense of a
root in space or time or both, whatever they may be.


DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE

The black rot dissolves into my tongue, sticking into the roof of my
mouth, it is a wasting candyfloss. A third beat to my heart, I feel my muscles
atrophy. Time flicks, head nods, sound reverses sleeping in a groundcar en
gine noise snaps brain to conscious level, time flicks, head nods...
The tube tumbles from my lips, across the pillow, onto the hard
brown carpet with a little tap. The parser kicks into the addiction zone, the
data feedback tumbles a waterfall of future.


DAY MINUS TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR

The parser had kicked out before the drug had worn away. In the
morning the bedspread was a mess. Another nosebleed; this pressure is too
much. Oh when will the thunder break? How fine would that be? I cleaned
myself up and Pete picked me up at ten thirty the day well and truely in pro
cess. More damn corpses.
"Hey." he smirked, steering with one hand so he flap his allsuit
open. A partygun complete with holster was slung around his chest. "Nice,
eh?"
"New shirt?" I joked with some distance.
"They gave me a gun! I told Mr. Wright at despatch that grey cargo
was too dangerous and I needed better protection. The wanker gave me this
baby to shut me up."
My neck got hot. Some kind of pride? "Pete, that's me. I'm not sat in
this passenger seat for the joyride. I am the security. " I said. No more words
came from Pete, he just clipped his suit closed and unsmirked. "If a corporate
squad troubles us it's my responsability to..."
"I didn't wanna ruffle your feathers, mate. Y'know, I just wanted a
free gun, man. "
"Partyguns need constant maintainance. "
"I don't care, it just looks intimidating and thats enough for me."
So the jackal finds it's teeth. Street carrion be wary.

Just before the vathouse in the industrial estate there is a steep dip
in the road, plunging under the power station's admin block. Skateboarders
often come here for an easy thrill but today a police lihtan was there. Sneaky
positioning so as to catch drivers coming down the ramp where they can't
doubleback. A black gloved hand pokes out from the lihtan window and waves
us to pull over. To Protect and Serve, I recognise that number. Pete stops the
hearse and clutches his keys instinctively. Officer Dink with determined poise
slips out of his chariot.
I cursed like a game junky as Peter pulled his window down with one index finger. Dink did something with hid wristcomp and our engine and headlights wnet dead whilst leaving the internal light live. Peter saw I was fretting.
"He can't take us in, we're covered by the biomass transport license."
As an afterthought he added; "Though if he wants to know what we intent to do with six corpses, I'll have to break his face."
"I swear this guy has been following me since the trial." I spoke urgently as Dink had finished with his wristcomp and was snapping out his baton. "He thinks I'm sick so he's found a legal way to harass me. He's going to use that baton," I pointed to the baton, "to smash one of us against that wall." I pointed to the underpass wall which was covered with flatscreen adverts.
"Well I tell you what, " Peter said," If one of us gets spread over that wall, the other has to buy them whatever the screen is advertising."
Oh, he wasn't joking. I guess as a driver her gets pulled over lots. This is some kind of pub-game for the frequently pulled over.
Dink was now a cautionary distance from the drivers window, addressing us with those pin-dot eyes.
"Evening fellas. You know I think there may be a problem with your tail light." Blank faced.
Empress... from the dashboard I took a marasmus tube and popped it.
"You haven't seen our tail light." Peter countered with a smile, playing the game. The grey rot dissolved into my tongue; maybe I could make this through.
"Okay fella, you're not in any trouble, I just want you to both get out and check your lights with me."
"Huh, why not." The seatbelts came off.
"Got anything I should know about before you get out? Any guns, knives, that sort of thing?"
Peter was acting like a flick anti-hero so I just knew he was going to say 'No'. I interjected with: "Officer, we both have pistols with licenses."
At this point I was decyphering Dink's face - is he pretending to not recognise me? Must be a trap... why would a Regency cop be checking traffic offences? He had stepped up to tap the dashboard with the baton.
"Slowly put the guns here, in their holsters."
We did so and got out, Dink locking the hearse doors using his wristcomp. I shook the ache from my cramped legs, loosing myself in the sharp vibrating night air. Pete was trying to display the various licenses, Dinks partner had gotten out of the cop car and was pottering over with impatience. Stopped paying attention and calmed down, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Looks like a routine hassle. Surely not a setup. Might be planting something. I hae a marasmus prescription (a tenuous one...) Pete has Sethyline 17 and Twisters...
"FUCK" someone said. I looked over to see Dink running Pete over to the tunnle wall in an armlock.
"Hey..." I tried to make the word make sense.



DAY MINUS ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY

 "Target. Amarilla. Location. Newtower. Nebraska. Method of termination. At

your discretion. Ensure target non-viability. Within. Four. Hundred. Hours.
Over. "

DAY MINUS TEN


CHAPTER TWO

INTERLUDE

Agent Smitty met Dr. Watchet beyond the range of Nylell-Darmen's
surveillance, a bench in an unattractive park in a dead corner of Little London.
"How's the christ doing?" Smitty asked quickly. He hated the touch
drizzle on his bald head. The doctor rolled his eyes.
"They're called Anagoics. Don't bring that whole religeous thing..."
"Whatever!" Smitty interrupted. "Just... is he wanting to go any
where yet?"
"No... we haven't completed all the uh... final modifications yet. "
Watchet said. He talked about corporate employees like they were electronic
gadgets. "I'm sure it would be easier to just monitor a previous batch..."
"You know how this one died?"
"Suicide... I oversaw the recovery of the corpse myself."

 	"Thats right... just like the first one."

Watchet smiled and wiped water specks from his forehead. "How
much do you trust documentation two centuries old?"