GRM Reaper Productions, Uninc. in association with British-AnimeTech Limited presents A PsychoMental Production A Virtual Non-Film Benjamin D. Hutchins Brian Bikowicz Rob Mandeville Undocumented Features THE CAST Benjamin D. Hutchins Gryphon Brian Bikowicz MegaZone (!23) Rob Mandeville ReRob Kei Kei Morgan Yuri Yuri Daniels Rob Crocker Crocker/Confused John Todd Macquivr/Q Adam Johnson Pfloyd Rich Parker Rich The Wedge Rats The Wedge Commandos John Coyle Coyle Larry Foard Entropy Andrew Petrarca Android Kevin Tefft Kevin Largo Largo Special Visual Effects by Your Brain On Drugs, Inc. Costumes by Why Me, Lord? Ltd. Vehicles by British-AnimeTech Ltd. Destruction by Joe Martin Destruction Systems International Cool Neo-TechTronic Things by British-AnimeTech Limited Music by Ben & Joe & The Assistance Screenplay by Brian Bikowicz From an Original Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins, Brian Bikowicz, and Rob Mandeville CLULESS Created by John Todd 8thdimension Created by Rob Mandeville The Wave Motion RifleTM Created by Andrew Petrarca The GRF-3N Griffin III Armored Combat Suit Created by Benjamin D. Hutchins Gryphon Created by Ben's Parents MegaZone Created by Brian's Parents ReRob Created by Rob's Parents Kei and Yuri Created by Haruka Takachiho Technical Support by Gadaiyio Takeimienei Publishing by Eyrie Publishing Co., NotEvenCloseToInc. Copyright (c) 1991, by Benjamin D. Hutchins, Brian Bikowicz, and Rob Mandeville This one's for all the people out there who love SF, anime, and the marvelous concept known as "write yer own". But more than that: For Kei and Yuri. Ben: For Mike, the original coauthor--he's the one who got me going on this write yer own stuff... For Joe, the reason I'm here in the first place. For Cory. You started the whole mess anyway, indirectly. For Zoner and ReRob, who got me running with this idea like a giant snowball. For Mom and Dad, who could never understand, but they're behind me anyway... For Randy, who has become comfortably numb. For Seann, who may well find himself caught up in similar insanity next year. For anyone else I can't recall right now...I write for everyone, but not everyone reads for me. Zoner: For the Wedge Rats, who so graciously helped in proofreading and conceptualizing this beast. For Dave, who has been my best friend for, oh about, 7 years now. You were the only one who could put up with me. For Gryphon and ReRob, who sucked me into this mess and got me thoroughly involved to the point that I couldn't get out. For the Internet, especially rec.arts.anime, for all of the good stories and information I have gathered over the years. For Jenna, who saved me from the brink. I owe you more than I can ever say. For Marc, who got me into anime in the first place. For my parents, who have encouraged me to be myself. ReRob: For Crocker, without whom the HDS would be just a dream. As if it isn't right now. For Ben and Zoner, who warped a simple storyline into a convoluted mess only an author could love. For Jolt, for obvious reasons. For Joe "Lampshade" Curtin, the Anti-Gweep, who drove me over the edge and into the Wedge in the first place. For my parents, who love me because they think I'm loony and not in spite of that fact. How It Began----------------------------------------------ONE "On the first day of the first month in some distant year, the whole sky froze golden. Some said it was the aftermath of the radium bomb, while others told of a final retribution, a terrible revenge, of the gods." --Def Leppard WEDNESDAY 2 OCTOBER 1991 It was a slow Wednesday; Ben was down in the subbasement of Fuller Labs, poking around in CSLANtronix. He got up, logged out, and, bored, slouched out of the room. It was nearing lunchtime; today he had actually gotten up rather early. He turned the corner, heading away from the elevator; he was curious as to what was over there. At the end of the hallway was a room whose door said "NO ONE CUMZ IN HEER. SEKRIT". Being the naturally inquisitive sort, Ben tried the handle on the door, just to see if it was locked. It wasn't. The room beyond was dark and silent, save for the thrum of machinery. He looked around; there was no one around, no one in the entire subbasement, probably, except him. He entered the room, closing the door behind him. His hand sought a lightswitch on the wall; he touched something. Immediately, the room blazed into light. All around him was the environment of a DECstation. "Wha--?!" he uttered involuntarily, stumbling backward. He turned; the door was gone. He turned back around, almost in a panic, and suddenly he realized where he was. This was 8thdimension! The HoloDECstation! "But that was only a story," he breathed. "This is nuts." But it wasn't, it couldn't be; there in front of him was an xeyes, an IRC window, and the tattered remains of an xtank game. The station was logged into an account that no longer existed. Ben walked to the session manager's icon and thumped it with a fist; immediately, the window sprang into existence. He pulled the session menu down and quit, then banged the "YES" box with his fist. The station logged out and returned him to the system prompt. With a growing smile, he stepped to the login box and drew his login name, gryphon, and his password, which I'm not going to write here, so neener neener neener. Within moments he was inside MWM on his own account. "Hmm...let's see what this thing can do." He pulled up an xgif -3 of /usr6/pub/anime/dp.portrait.gif, the 2d version of which he always had running on a normal DECstation whenever he used it. Then, with a suitable distraction running, he started fooling around. He soon discovered xtty, which created a keyboard for him to type on; he found writing in air tiresome. As he sat clattering away, he decided to cd to /usr1 and see what was in there, but by a strange typo, he wound up typing What do we do next, Doctor? A:>cd /usr-1 instead. To his surprise, he wound up in a directory. He ls'd it and discovered that it only contained one file: cluless "What the hell is cluless?" he wondered, cding it. That accomplished a bit, and it soon became apparent that it was a software compiler. He more'd the README file. CLULESS CLULESS is a software compiler designed to generate artificial nonintelligence. It is the considered opinion of the author that true artificial intelligence is impossible, since so little natural intelligence exists to use as a model. Therefore, I have developed a software package which will generate, I hope, artificial NONintelligences, with which the casual user will be much better acquainted. Source code may be entered using emacs or another text editor and then compiled using the command clucomp -i . NEVER use clucomp without the -i flag. Ben's brows knitted; no explanation of the syntax of the language, nothing of that sort whatsoever. He wondered briefly what would happen if he were to start programming something and then compile it through clucomp. He thought nothing more of it, having no idea what the programming syntax for CLULESS was; instead he played with the station for a while longer and then decided to clr2gray a Dirty Pair .gif for mailing to a friend of his. However, in his rushed typing and crossed up train of thought (he always typed too fast) he wound up typing What do we do next, Doctor? A:>clucomp~/dp.PS He received the following messages: WARNING! Two separate entities--divided successfully. WARNING! Insufficient data. Auto-crosschecking: please wait: checking: dp.beverly.gif checking: dp.bikini.gif WARNING! Extraneous entity ignored! checking: dp.calender.gif checking: dp.chased.gif checking: dp.cycle.gif checking: dp.dressing.gif WARNING! Significant deviation from previous data! disregarding discrepant data. checking: dp.gunpod.gif WARNING! Significant deviation from previous data! Disregarding discrepant data. checking: dp.keitop.gif WARNING! Source lacking significant chromatic variation! Interpolating proper coloration from other data. checking: dp.portrait.gif checking: dp.rambo.gif checking: dp.topgun.gif checking: dp.water.gif Visual data successfully compiled. Now compiling personality protocols. checking......... Failure in locating data! Checking system for data................... Data located in /usr6/pub/anime/Scripts/ checking: dp.bigbang.Z checking: dp.eden.nr.Z checking: dp.eden.ps.Z WARNING! Duplicate data! Ignoring superfluous data. checking: dp.flight005.syn.Z checking: dp.movie.Z checking: dp.oav005.Z WARNING! Duplicate data! checking: dp.robin.Z Personality protocols successfully compiled. Interpolating... Interpolation complete. Extrapolating... Extrapolation complete. Compilation complete and successful. fbps: Cannot output to PostScript. "What?" He tried it again, oblivious to what he had done, and this time it worked; he outputted to -Plps20 and thought no more about it. Annoyingly, the station seemed to have slowed down. When he emerged from the HoloDECstation four hours later, having totally missed lunch, he found an extremely surprising sight waiting for him. He backed out of the room and closed the door; when he turned around he stopped breathing for a moment and almost dropped dead in his tracks. Two beautiful, and totally naked, women were standing in the hallway. They weren't doing much of anything; just standing. Somewhere in the back of his head he could hear guitars... <> He recognized them, of course he recognized them, but what the hell were they doing there? He turned around-- The door was gone. Momentarily panicked, he grabbed for the doorknob; the wall melted away and he was inside the station again. It had recognized him as its operator. He logged in and did a "what gryphon"--and received the following message: USER PROC# TIME TTY IDLE JOB gryphon 4432 17:38 8E ps gryphon 19553 17:38 8E sh gryphon 3180 17:38 8E grep gryphon 1010 17:38 8E tcsh gryphon 22067 17:58 8D 4:15 fbps gryphon 1009 17:58 8D :05 tcsh Ben called up the uncompiled code and found the line: Clothing=$null /*conflicting data, clothing dropped*/ Which he quickly changed to Clothing=$WWWAuniforms in both kei.cluless and yuri.cluless. What do we do next, Doctor? A:> kill -9 22067 [22067] Killed What do we do next, Doctor? A:> kill -9 1009 [1009] Killed What do we do next, Doctor? A:> Maybe that will do it, he thought as he logged out and left the station. They were still there; now, though, they were moving. And they were clothed in V-cut shorts, high-collared, open- fronted halter tops, and tall boots. The hung fbps job had held them there, unmoving; now they were freed. Without realizing what he was doing, Ben had created the world's first artificial life, CLULESSly compiling a .gif file and generating a life form with the absolute statistics of the .gif's subject. CLULESS's designer didn't realize it could do that, but then, he designed a programming language called CLULESS, so how brilliant could he have been? The red-haired one fixed him with a clear brown-eyed gaze and said forcefully, "Anta wa dareda?!" To which Ben replied articulately, "Huh?" "Kore wa nani o shimasu ka?" the other chimed in. "Uh...look...I don't speak Japanese..." Ben backed through the portal to 8thdimension again and called up the uncompiled source code for them, which was now split into two files and overloading his directory bigtime. He searched the one entitled kei.cluless frantically, searching for something, anything, that--AHA! The string there, LANG=$Japanese. That looked promising. He changed it to $English, then changed his mind and changed it to $AmericanGeneric. He altered yuri.cluless the same way, and then logged out yet again. When he exited, he was met by a long string of questions--but they were all in AmericanGeneric, a language he could understand. He weathered the storm, waited for his "guests" to calm, and then said evenly and diplomatically, "My name is Hutchins. Benjamin D. Hutchins. You can call me Ben. You're Kei," he said, pointing, "and you're Yuri. I don't know how you got here, really." He shrugged and opened his arms wide in a gesture of benediction. "Welcome to WPI!" The Battle of DAKA----------------------------------------TWO "What happened to your last fryboy?" "Fired. Thirty seconds under the broiler and he was done to perfection." --Nutrimancer MegaZone, ReRob, Q (aka Macquivr), Kevin Tefft, and Rob Crocker were sitting around in the Wedge when the glass doors from the Quad opened up and Ben walked in. He had on his face the biggest, smuggest, most shit-eating grin any of them had ever seen--and it was Wednesday, too, which made it awfully hard for them to take. "What're you smiling at?" ReRob asked. "I did something impossible this morning," he replied. <> Just about then, Kei and Yuri walked into the Wedge behind him. There were four seconds of dead silence. Crocker, MegaZone, and Q went deathly pale; Kevin looked up, shrugged, and went back to reading; ReRob tipped his hat full and ornate. Then seven words forced themselves out of MegaZone's nearly terror-paralyzed throat: "My God, we're all going to die." "Baaah?" said Q. "Um," said Crocker. "So?" said ReRob. "Hmmph," said Kevin. "Uh, Ben...we need to talk." MegaZone looked worried about something. "Later, later. Much as I hate to do this--it's DAKA time..." He turned and headed for the cafeteria, giving the assembled Wedge Rats a jaunty wave; then he noticed that Kei and Yuri were following him. "Why are you following me?" "Lack of anything better to do?" Yuri suggested. "Actually, I'm hungry," said Kei. "Oh." Ben shrugged and led the way into DAKA. His ID card was presented, slotted, and pinged; he took it back and stepped aside. "ID, please--gah!" said the young Pascal student as he saw Yuri. "Oh, by the way, you don't mind if these lovely young ladies eat with me tonight, do you? No, I didn't think so," said Ben rapidly. "Come on," he said, indicating for them to follow him into the food line. He noticed immediately that the dining hall had become almost silent. Everyone but the most oblivious had stopped eating and was just staring, including the entrees. The staring continued until the three of them vanished into the kitchen. "Oh, hey, it's just like WWWA Academy food," said Kei. "What're they having tonight?" "Uh...Unidentifiable Red Stuff DuJour," said Ben, peering at the vat. "Great! I really missed this stuff. I'll have some of that." The DAKA attendant, totally unfazed, plopped some of the wriggling mass onto her plate. Ben and Yuri, being of more sensible casts, chose the Amazing DAKABurger (put it on a bun, it's hamburger. With mushroom gravy, it's Salisbury steak. Bleach it and it's chicken--or, with tartar sauce, fish!). (No one is quite sure what it is, exactly; most people refer to it as DAKAbeast. The general consensus is that they would rather not know what it is.) Silence descended like a core dump on DAKA once again as they emerged from the kitchen; they started working their way toward the windows, where there was an empty table, when Guyblood jumped to his feet, doing an "I'm cool, I'm decisive, I'm leaving DAKA," just as Kei was behind him with her tray. With a tremendous CRASH Guyblood's back slammed the tray food-side-up into Kei's chest. Unidentifiable Red Stuff DuJour cascaded down her invisible pyroplastic lamination, and some of it splattered on her face and hair. "Hey!" she shouted, smacking him in the back with the tray. "Watch it, you moron!" The impact knocked the already unbalanced Guyblood face-first into Jeremy's tray, splattering U.R.S.DuJ. all over him as well. Jeremy replied with an ill-aimed glass of orange stuff that struck the Sig Ep at the next table. And so on, and so on, and so on. "I think we'd better get out of here," Ben announced, and started edging toward the back exit, near the cereal. Kei and Yuri, being somewhat sensible, tried their best to follow, but from the direction of the salad bar came a flying, razor-edged DAKA spoon. It slammed into the wall inches from Kei's right ear, snipping off a chunk of fiery red hair, then vibrated softly (wub wub wub). "HEY!" she bellowed, momentarily halting the action in the dining hall. Her eyes narrowed; she went for her laser... <> In the Wedge, MegaZone, et al., heard the escalating chaos, but chose to ignore it. Suddenly, a thought occurred to MegaZone. He looked up from the printout he was perusing and said, "Uh...they didn't have their guns with them, did they?" Crocker thought for a second, then said, "No, I don't think so." ZARK! A charred body, still venting sparkles of energy, was catapulted out of the DAKA exit, slammed into the airlock, and slid down. A man in a chef's hat darted out and dragged it back in. "We're safe out here, though, aren't we?" asked Q. "Yeah," said MegaZone. "'Long as they don't have any mini-grenades." Suddenly he realized what he had said; his eyes widened and the entire Wedge crew, screaming as one, charged in an amorphous mass out of the Wedge and into the Quad. Flashes of laser fire could be seen through the dining hall windows; they were increasing in intensity, and occasionally people, charred or just bruised, would be catapulted out of the window near the salad bar. Amazingly, none of the other windows were broken. "Ok, head count," Crocker announced, his ROTC training coming to the fore. "Zoner, me, Q, Kevin, ReRob...where's ReRob?" "OH NO!" The Wedge Rats turned and started hollering at the Wedge. "REROB! GET OUT! GET OUTTA THERE! REEROOOBB!" ReRob looked up, wondering what all the noise was. There was a blinding flash behind the dining hall windows; then, with an incredibly picturesque KERBLAMMO!, the entire dining hall exploded. The Wedge Rats dropped face-down to the Quad as chunks of brick, tables, and frat brothers flew over them in the lazily tumbling anime style. There were four or five secondary explosions, and then the entire gutted structure collapsed into itself. Along with it went that entire end of Morgan Hall, tumbling down into the wreckage, except for the end of the fourth floor hallway, which, by some incredible piece of luck, remained hanging over the rubble zone. <> (wub wub wub) The Wedge Rats stood up; MegaZone removed his Rho Alpha Tau cap and placed it over his heart. No way had Ben survived that. ReRob maybe, there was still hope, but Ben was undoubtedly flat. Such, he thought, was the price of his folly, bringing the Dirty Pair into the world. A chunk of rubble, not far from one of the small and lazily burning aftermath fires, shifted and crashed aside. The sky rumbled and split and it started raining heavily. Then a silver-gloved fist smashed some of the rubble aside and, coughing and choking, Kei stood up, then hauled Yuri to her feet. Ben scrambled out from under the wreckage as well. "Oh, wonderful shooting," said Ben sarcastically, brushing off his overcoat. (wub wub wub) "It's not my fault," Kei replied defensively. "He threw a spoon at me!" (wub wub wub) "Yeah," Yuri said, "but everything was under control until you put the laser bolt into the Jell-O." "I must agree," said Ben, "putting excited photons into DAKA Jell-O is a big mistake. Experimental evidence would seem to bear that out." (wub wub wub) The door to the Wedge on the Daniels side creaked, clattered, then fell out and shattered on the steps, the metal frame tumbling into the street. ReRob looked down at the mess in a bemused fashion, then shrugged and stepped down, heading across toward the other Wedge Rats. He was unscathed. (wub wub wub) "ReRob! You're ok!" said Crocker. "Spiking the p-field again," MegaZone muttered. Ben, Kei, and Yuri were still arguing about whose fault it was; Kei had brought up Yuri's firing at the salad bar as a possible cause, although Ben claimed the Italian dressing wasn't as volatile as the Jell-O, especially the lime, which had been the Jell-O DuJour. It may have even been the explosive decompression of the ice cream machine. A brick cracked loose from the hanging chunk of Morgan Hall and narrowly missed killing Ben. He glanced up, his train of thought derailed, to see the overhanging piece of building start to break free. (wub wub wub) "SHIT!" he screamed, and started running for the Quad. Kei and Yuri easily outran him, especially since he tripped on an indestructible DAKA tray and fell flat on his face in the rubble, stunned. Kei heard him hit the ground and skidded to a halt, turned, and bodily hauled his entire 100- kilo mass out into the street. (wub wub wub) He regained enough sense to stumble to his feet and get halfway across the Quad before the final CRACK echoed across campus. (wub wub wub) He turned to see the chunk of Morgan Hall hanging in the air; then it broke free completely and slowly fell from its perch. It started to rotate, but before it could, it smashed into the rubble of the caf and the bottom two layers of dorm. "My room!" Ben screamed as it hit. (wub wub wub) Amazingly, the piece of dorm didn't shatter into a thousand and one pieces the instant it slammed into the rest of the rubble; instead, it bounced once and settled, more or less even and more or less intact. (wub wub wub) Ben charged across the rubble, heedless of the bad footing, found the opening to the hallway, and entered; the building had broken off just before his room and the wall of the room beside it was still there, posters and all. He fumbled for his keys, dropped them, recovered them, and opened his door. (wub wub wub) The room was a little more tumbled than usual, but everything was intact; even the fish tank was undamaged. The power was even still on, although how that could be he wasn't quite sure. (wub wub wub) Satisfied, he closed the door and left. He'd clean up later. (wub wub wub) "Well, you're closer to the Wedge now," said ReRob. (As it turned out, that was not to be; although the crater that had been DAKA was sealed under a titanium sheath to prevent toxic contamination, Ben's room was reattached and the entire north end of Morgan Hall repaired that afternoon by overeager Civil students from Kaven Hall.) Handle With Care--------------------------------------------e "Remember--lightest touch counts!" --The Pioneer Valley Combat Club Later that evening, in the still-intact-if-slightly- rubble-littered Wedge, an evening of standard Wedging around was taking place. Ben was taking a particular interest in the boffa-weapon combat taking place; Zoner against Erik Swimm, and Zoner was winning quite handily. (Actually, he was winning around half the time, but inflicting more damage in every combat.) "Whose folder is this?" asked Kei, poking him in the shoulder and indicating a blue folder lying on the Wedge table. "Dunno...I think it's Vaughn's. He's been looking for it, as I recall..." Just then, Vaughn entered the Wedge in his standard garb; jeans, sneakers, t-shirt. "Morning. How's life. Anyone seen my blue folder?" "Yeah, it's--?" The folder was gone. "Hmm?" "Uh...never mind." "Oh. Well, it must be in the next one over then." For an instant, it seemed that he flickered, like a TV when lightning strikes nearby. If Ben had blinked, he would've missed it. "Well," said Vaughn, "since no one has seen it, I guess I'll just go back to E7, take out my eyes, and become unconscious. Good night..." "'Night, Vaughn," Ben called as Vaughn padded out. "Hmm?" Kei peered at Vaughn as he left, treading unconcernedly upon the floor in his bare feet, and then turned to Ben. "Wasn't he wearing shoes when he came in?" "What?" "Never mind..." "Dunno..." Suddenly, on an impulse, Ben jumped up, shucked his overcoat, and entered the Wedge floor, calling for Erik to toss him the boffa-dagger, which he did. Ben had been practicing for some time; he was a fairly decent fighter now. He was holding his own against MegaZone in what was a desperate combat to say the least. And then a voice rang across the Wedge, clear as a bell: "Zoner!" MegaZone turned, held a hand for pause, and tossed his boffa-dagger to Kei. <> Ben saw his life flash before him with the initial touch; then all his thoughts were based on defense against a trained and practiced onslaught of PVC, foam, and duct tape. He ducked sideways, then performed a nifty tuck under the hissing arc of her boffa-dagger; popping back to his feet, he swept his own weapon around in a slash of his own. Boffa- dagger met boffa-dagger. Damn, she's fast, thought Ben as he desperately parried a blinding series of attacks. There's got to be a weakness somewhere. He weaved across the Wedge, blocking and dodging, the jeers of his fellow Wedge Rats echoing in his ears. He ducked behind one of the columns, then did something extremely sneaky; he kept the pillar between himself and Kei. She couldn't get eyes on him for the life of her; it was as though he had disappeared. Then he reversed the direction of his travel around the pillar, climbed onto one of the Wedge trash barrels, swept the dagger in a great sweep, and tapped the point to Kei's back, just between the shoulder blades. She turned around and grinned. "Cheap trick," she said. "Effective, but cheap." "Uh, Ben? Could I have a word with you?" MegaZone said. "Sure," Ben replied. "Yuri! Catch." He tossed her the boffa-dagger and followed MegaZone out by the mailboxes. "What's up, Zoner?" "You've got to get them out of here," MegaZone said urgently. "Now." "What? Why?" "You read the book. Everywhere they go, everyone dies." "You die...she dies...evvverybody dies..." "Stop it! You're not Ard, Ard is my roommate. Seriously, I don't want to die just yet. I don't care how good-looking they are, I! don't! want! to! die!" "Zoner, you're overreacting. We're not going to die." Ben turned and started heading back to the Wedge. "You worry too much. Besides, there aren't any space stations around." "You don't understand," MegaZone cried, following him. "You're going to get us all killed!" "I don't think so...somehow, I don't think so...just... trust me on this, will you? I have a feeling about this." "Yeah, it's called lust--" "Oh, come on! You wound me, you really do. Take thy beak from out my heart." He turned again and went to the gweepery. Wonder of wonders, an open terminal. He sat down and logged in; a few moments later he sensed a presence, over his shoulder, watching. He looked back; Kei was standing behind him, looking at the monitor. "What's up?" he asked, returning to his gweeping. "Not much," Kei replied. "Yuri's fighting with MegaZone and I got bored. Figured I'd come out here and see what you were up to." "He's gweeping," said Guyblood from the other terminal. "That's all he ever does. He has no life." A look of outrage formed on Kei's face; with one arm she heaved Rick bodily from his seat, turning him and yanking his face right into hers. "Now look, buddy," she said dangerously, "I don't know where you get off passing judgement like that, but it doesn't seem to me you have much more of a life than he does--" "Oh, thanks a lot, Kei," Ben muttered, smacking the Return key a little harder than necessary. "--and if it weren't for him gweeping, as you put it, I wouldn't even be here right now!" She shook him rather violently. "I ought to kill you right here and now, just for the mess you caused in DAKA, you miserable little--" "Uh, Kei?" Ben said, getting up and managing to maneuver past his seat in the crowded gweepery.Z. "What?!" "He passed out about five seconds ago." "Oh." Mildly peeved at not having been able to complete her lecture, Kei dumped Rick unceremoniously back in his seat. "How did he get out of that explosion anyway?" "Idunno. But I do know a true gweep," Ben grinned, looking at Rick's unconscious form and still-logged-in terminal, "would never pass up this opportunity." Hosehosehosebashbashbash. "There, that ought to keep him wondering for a few years," said Ben with a smile. He logged himself out, but left Rick on, so he wouldn't be suspicious. Nothing in his homedir looked different, but... "What time is it anyway?" Kei asked him. He noticed with some measure of surprise that, sometime while he was hosing Guyblood's account, she had taken up a new position, leaning, arms crossed, on the back of his shoulders, her chin on the top of his head. He wondered, idly, what the hell for? "Uh..." He checked his watch. "Three-fifteen in the Oh my God, what are we doing up this late 'ning." "The what?" "The Oh my God, what are we doing up this late 'ning. From two to six AM. The other time periods are morning, six to ten, midday, ten to two, afternoon, two to six, evening, six to ten, and gweepning, ten to two." "Oh." Ben returned to the Wedge. Zoner and Yuri were sitting in the corner of one of the booths, discussing something; Zoner was using his hands to describe motions, which led Ben to believe he was recounting some sort of adventure, probably involving a death defying drive in the Daytona from Hell, while Yuri listened attentively, pausing every now and then to laugh politely. "I," Ben announced upon reaching the Wedge, "am very, very tired. I got up and studied for that Pascal test-- which, incidentally, I boned badly, for anyone who cares-- this morning at eight. It is now three-fifteen. I am therefore going to bed." "Then what are we going to do?" Yuri asked him. In a startling case of parallel development, both he and MegaZone considered for a moment; then each decided his budding friendship with them was solid enough to try a silly, joking innuendo. "Come with me," they both said, and started for the exits. To their and everyone else in the Wedge's extremely incredible surprise, Kei and Yuri looked at each other, shrugged, split up, and followed. Let me tell you, there were some turned heads on Morgan 4th that night. <> Ben couldn't keep the grin off his face as he walked down the hallway toward his room, noting with detached interest the skill with which the dorm had been Krazy Glued back together by the Civils. (They had been practicing long and hard for a day like this.) Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view), his sleeping bag was not of the normal variety; if one were to fully unzip it, it became two separate parts, both of which could then be zipped into a separate sleeping bag. After performing said operation with precision, Ben flopped half of it onto the floor and kicked off his shoes. An argument ensued over "no, I insist" and "no, it's your room," but in the end, he managed to talk Kei into taking the bed. He put out the light, crawled into the bag, made himself as comfortable as one can be with clothes on, and drifted off to sleep, thinking about what a fincredible day he'd had. Zoner, meanwhile, walked into E7 with a nonchalant grin. Nobody in the apartment even questioned where she came from; those who knew, knew, and those who didn't, didn't want to. The only comment that was made was the one Chris Smith screamed toward the ceiling: "VAUGHN!!!!" Coyle Spring--------------------------------------------THREE "Claustrophobic? Hey, do you want a punch in the face or something? I've never even LOOKED at another guy!" --Casey Jones THURSDAY 3 OCTOBER 1991 It was a normal Thursday morning in the Wedge save for a couple of factors: one, it was Career Day, so there were no classes, and two, there could be no such thing as a normal morning anymore. Hanging around the Wedge that fine morning (technically midday, since it was eleven-thirty) were pfloyd, Crocker, Jay Phelps, and Erik Swimm. Crocker was explaining with violent hand motions and lots of shouting what pfloyd had missed, being an off-campus student and all, while the latter sat taking everything in with a slack jaw. "I don't befuckinglieve it," he mumbled as Crocker finished up his tale of amazingness and woe. "And to make things even better," said Rob, "he hasn't come down yet!" "That's not unusual," pfloyd replied, checking his watch. "It's only eleven-thirty--he doesn't get up until at least noon." SKWEEEEEKrrkkkweequeRUNK--wheeet!whio thud. <> Ben wandered into the Wedge, wearing the same clothes he had on the day before and thoroughly wrinkled. He looked annoyingly pleased with himself. "Hey," said Phelps, and the Wedge Rats saw Ben visibly wince. He knew something tasteless was coming. He held up his hand for a warning-- SKWEEEEEKrrkkkweequeRUNK--wheeet!whio thud. "How was she?" ZARK. "Fully clothed," said Kei with a cruel grin as she stepped around the corner, returning her smoking laser to its holster. Phelps slumped to the Wedge floor, his idiot grin permanently fixed to his face. Moments later, a man in a chef's hat ran from the mailboxes, grabbed him, and dragged him away. "Hey!" said Crocker. "That can't be--DAKA is destroyed!" "Wait a minute, Rob," said pfloyd, rising to his feet. "You've forgotten something." "What?" "Founders." "Right, men! We've a job to do. A duty to perform!" Crocker dug into his duffel bag and hefted his M-16A1 magic wand. "On to honor! On to glory! On to Founders DAKA!" And the Wedge Commandos retrieved their weapons from beneath the Wedge bench and trooped out. "Weird," said Ben, slumping into a booth. "Whattaweek." At about that time, with a tremendous crash of glass and metal and a shout of consternation, a bunch of big guys in windbreakers hurled ReRob through the airlock. "," said he, picking himself up, he was speechless. The four guys shouted in unison "This is your last warning!", turned, and marched away. The backs of their jackets said "KSNP". "Uh, ReRob--who was that?" inquired Ben. "Uh, like have some intense hatred?" spewed Q. "The Knights of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path," replied ReRob, dusting himself gently off with his hat. "I just don't get it. Four guys run up to me, gang-tackle me, and call me queer! With MY P-score! Talk about bad karma!" Macquivr looked up and said, "Some people, you know, they just will not do." "Awww," said Ben. "Sucks to be you," Kei added. "Where did you learn that?" She angled a thumb at Ben. "Oh." ReRob contemplated his hat for a moment. "Things that make you go...hmmm..." "Oh, shut up," said Ben, sinking further into his coat. "What?" ReRob protested. "I was just talking..." "ReRob," said Ben tiredly, getting to his feet, "as I am about to explain for the FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH TIME this morning midday afternoon..." Ben took him by the shoulder and led him out onto the Quad, where he then threw his arms wide and bellowed, " [ [ [[[[[[ [[[[[[[[ [ [ [ [[ [ [[[[[[ [[[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [ [[[[ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [[ [ [[[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[ [ [ [ [[ [[[[[[ [ [ [ [ [ [[ [[[[[[ [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ [ [ [[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[[ [[ [ [[[[[[ [[[[[ [ [ [ [ [[[[ [ [ [ [ [ [[[ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [[[ [ [ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[ [ [[ [ [[[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[[ [ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[[[[ [ [[ [[[[[[ [[[[ [ [ " The Wedge windows rattled. "That's what Yar said, too," said ReRob unflappedly. Ben took a deep breath and walked back into the Wedge. ReRob shrugged and followed him. Moments later the Wedge Commandos returned, grimy, sweaty, food-smeared, breathless, their ammo depleted, wounded, grinning, and triumphant. The muzzle was blown completely off Crocker's magic M-16, but he seemed quite happy nonetheless. "DAKA is dead! DAKA is dead!" they chanted as they paraded into the Wedge, bearing on their shoulders the heroes of the hour: Zoner and Yuri. Ben buried his face in his hands and slid to the Wedge floor. "Gravity works," ReRob reminded him. "I know," he replied. Meanwhile, the Wedge Commandos deposited their heroes in the Wedge and were marching out into the Quad, alternating "DAKA is dead!" with "Zo-ner!" and "Yu-ri!" Ben turned to ReRob, grabbed him by the shirt, and said in an anguished tone, "What have I done?!" "Grabbed my shirt. The last guys to do that were the Coylian Armada. I suggest you refrain from such actions in the future." "So, ah, Zoner...how did your evening go?" MegaZone smirked a silly little smirk, whistled a little tune, and said nothing. A bead of sweat rolled down Ben's nose, poised on the tip, and fell off. His hands were shaking, his eyes squeezed shut. Zoner's little silly grin drove him absolutely insane, especially under circumstances like these. It was just about then that John Coyle himself entered the Wedge. Unlike the last several times he had entered this particular area, he was not afraid, perhaps because there were very few Wedge Rats in attendance. Only Ben and Q, who were technically members of Meta Chi, not Rho Alpha Tau, were there, ReRob, MegaZone, and, of course, Kei and Yuri. They were all slouched into one Wedge booth, with Kei and Yuri at the back, directly behind the table, Zoner and Ben in the corresponding corners, and Macquivr and ReRob on the sides. Coyle walked over to the Wedge booth, stood in front of it for a moment, and contemplated the Pair. For a moment it appeared he was going to just turn around and walk away; after all, he was receiving extremely strong "FUCK OFF AND GO AWAY" vibes from the Wedge Rats in the booth. But he weathered the onslaught long enough to shake his head and say sadly, "I see you've recruited another matched set." Ben could feel Kei stiffen beside him, even though he wasn't in actual physical contact; the sight of the muscles in her jaw jumping may have been a good clue. Yuri remained somewhat calm, but Coyle felt new additions to the hate barrage from that quarter as well. Zoner, having some experience in dealing with Johnny, just shook his head, knowing what was coming next. And the likely result. "And just what," Yuri said slowly, carefully, "was that supposed to mean?" "Well, it's obvious from the way you're dressed and sitting there--the Wedge Rats have absorbed another matched set of lesbians....when will you people learn--" Ben and Zoner ducked to the sides, going over the side panels into the Wedge and the next booth over respectively. They both knew full well what happened next. "HrrARRRRGHH!!" In perfect unison, Kei and Yuri jumped up onto the Wedge bench itself; then they launched themselves, still absolutely synchronized, up into the air. Ben could almost hear the "tching". They hung in the air for perhaps half a second--a neat trick if you can do it--before unloading twin flying side kicks into Coyle's face. With a wooden-sounding THRUD, Coyle fell flat on his back to the Wedge floor. Q snapped his fingers and announced, "Cold boot." The Pair got down from the table and walked around to either side of him, standing on either side of his head, tapping their toes, arms folded. "So I was wrong," Coyle whispered, still barely conscious. "You're not a matched set. You're both bull dykes." Kei and Yuri's boots slammed into either of his temples at exactly the same time. With nowhere to go, his head was caught in the middle. Consciousness went pif. "Reboot," said Q. itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy--------------------pi "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." --Sherlock Holmes Ben led Kei, MegaZone, Yuri, and ReRob into the depths of Fuller Labs later that afternoon, telling them simply, "You have to see this." "CSLANtronix? I've seen this place before, you know." "No, not that--this." With that Ben grabbed him by the collar and tossed him through the invisible door. PLOOP. "Oh. Shit." muttered ReRob. "Wow, what is this place?" asked Yuri. "I fraggin' wrote this." declared ReRob. "I fraggin' found it, so slot me, ok?" announced Ben. "Rather not." replied ReRob. "Do what to him?" said Kei. "Never mind," murmured Ben. Ben logged in and gestured grandly as the DECstation sprang into existence around them. "Cool," said MegaZone. "Great place to hold Matrix runs in my Shadowrun campaigns." "The Black IC would be a bitch though, for the players too." ReRob quipped, then to Ben, "Whatever you do, don't call up an xtank..." "The absence of xtank from your directory is not a coincidence," Ben said with a grin. "Huh?" questioned ReRob. "Forget it--you never heard about that?" asked Ben. "I'm nigh-oblivious, remember?" "Oh yeah." "But this is 8thdimension?!" "It was." "Was?" "I changed the name." "WHAT?! Why?" "Because the old name was an aej name ...I wanted something different." "What's it called now?" "itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy." "You're sick." "I know." "Itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy?" inquired Yuri. "We've got to show these two Buckaroo Banzai," Zoner observed. "And while we're at it--hey, let's have the anime festival in the Wedge tomorrow! We'll show Space Cruiser Yamato, and BGC, and all my DP stuff--" His mildly demonic grin was getting worse by the passing second. "What's the point, though?" ReRob interrupted. "I mean, you found the HoloDECstation--what does that have to do with--" "Well, I found this--" What do we do next, Doctor? A:> cd /usr-1 What do we do next, Doctor? A:> ls cluless What do we do next, Doctor? A:> "Stop right there," said ReRob urgently. "Do you know what you are doing?" "Of course not." "I didn't think so. Let me fill you in." He took off his hat, cleared his throat, and prepared to exposit. "CLULESS is a programming language which was developed by an unknown but undoubtedly fucked up user." ReRob went on to explain the nuances of CLULESS. And how it was very probably responsible for Kei and Yuri's very existence. As they left the HoloDECstation, Ben contemplated what he had heard. He became more and more convinced that what he had done was a Good Thing. Kei and Yuri wondered why they existed at all. Kei in particular wondered what kind of horrible things could happen to you if you thought your creator was cute. And, for that matter, exactly why she thought he was cute. The First Wedge War--------------------------------------FOUR "It's not the one bullet with your name on it that you have to worry about; it's the twenty thousand-odd rounds labeled `occupant.'" --Murphy's Laws of Combat SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER 1991 It was a standard Saturday in the Wedge; Ben was sitting in the first booth from the mailboxes, getting his stuff ready to play Morrow Project. Zoner was in the next booth over preparing some kind of report and munching on a sandwich. Most of the Wedge Rats were around. Kei and Yuri were discussing close-combat techniques with Tim. fnord "You know," Kelli was telling Kevin Tefft, "I get the absolute strangest feeling about those two..." Rich stood up and shielded his eyes with a hand, peering out over the Quad. "Hey...what frat around here wears red and gold?" "None that I know of," some generic personage replied. "Why?" "Because there's about a million guys in red and gold windbreakers marching this way--and...hey! THEY'VE GOT GUNS!" Rob Crocker jumped to his feet and sprang to the windows; he peered out as well. "I'll be damned. There are a lot of 'em, aren't there?" "Who are they?" "I don't know," said MegaZone, joining them at the windows, "but that's John Coyle in the lead--" "The Knights of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path!" ReRob shouted. "Red alert!" Crocker yelled. "ReRob--activate the defense shield. Ben, Kevin, Zoner--man your weapons! Everyone else, battle stations! Prepare to repulse invasion!" ReRob jumped up behind the Wedge booth near the broken wall and slapped his palm onto the fire alarm. This wasn't an actual alarm switch, but the box that gave out the alarm sounds; it had another purpose. Its activation threw the Wedge into emergency red alert status and activated the Wedge defensive shield. Outside, Coyle ordered the front ranks to open fire. <> Too late; as the first few ranks of Knights opened up with their laser rifles, which for all the world looked like AK47s, the shield was already up. The bolts burst harmlessly on the forcefield, appearing inside the Wedge as blue dots on the shield. "Hey Kevin, look. Blue dots," ReRob announced. "Oh, shut up," said Kevin as he ran to his battle station. With near-anime synchronizedness, he, MegaZone, and Ben all wound up and kicked the three small Wedge tables in the middle. They popped open, the Wedge windows flipped down, and their weapons emerged. On either side were Ben and Zoner's weapons, 20mm M61-A1 Vulcan gatling guns; in the center was Kevin's, a double-barrelled, reactor-powered, plasma-fired flamethrower. Ben slapped on his gunner's helmet, adjusted the mike, turned on the motor for the rotary barrels, and announced, "Wedge Gun One! Ready!" Zoner did the same. "Wedge Gun Two! Ready!" Kevin put on his oven mitts. "WedgeFlame One! Ready!" Meanwhile a computer voice was announcing loudly "RED ALERT. RED ALERT. THE WEDGE IS ON RED ALERT." The Wedge lights turned red. A Red Alert signal flashed on the Lower Wedge windows/liquid-crystal viewscreen. Crocker popped open the principal Wedge booths and a hand from below started passing the emergency defense M-16s to the general populace. Wedge Rats took up positions behind the other tables, behind pillars, behind trash cans, anywhere they could contribute to the defense of the Wedge if the forcefield failed. The Coylians reached the barrier, which extended from the Wedge to the curb; they began pouring laser fire into it. It was a tough device, designed and installed by the legendary First Wedge Rat whose name has been lost to history; even so, it couldn't handle such an onslaught of force for long. Not without blacking out Worcester County. "We have got to get a better power source," said Zoner as he opened fire with his Vulcan. "Well, there's always the radioactive sludge that was DAKA," Ben suggested, activating his own weapon. "Great idea!" Zoner shouted. "It'd be better than Protoculture if we got the resonances right!" (wub wub wub) Macquivr took his station behind the furthest small Wedge table to the east and, picking up a PA mike, began a play-by-play account of the action. The shield was starting to fail. A Coylian stepped up to it and, point-blank, began hammering it with laser bolts, hoping to break through at one specific point. That was incredibly stupid; two streams of blue-white flame and twin rivers of depleted uranium converged on him and baked, roasted, pureed, chopped, and shredded him to a state quite beyond simple mere death. "Gaaah," said Q, "like have some hot flaming brutal destruction." Alec walked in with a pizza, asking who had ordered it; Crocker paid, then handed him an M-16 and proclaimed him drafted. The screaming legions of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path charged the shield, battering it with laser fire and the stocks of their guns. It began to fold for real. "ReRob!" Ben screamed. "The shield's failing!" "Degauss it!" ReRob told him. "Got it!" Ben took one hand off the butterfly grips of his weapon long enough to slap the fire alarm switch hanging on the airlock next to him. The shield pulsed, rainbowing in that pattern of colors called Psychedelic Yawn by some authorities on the psychedelic, and then solidified, temporarily reinstated. Most of Worcester blacked out. One Coylian soldier had penetrated the field during the degauss; he was inside Ben and MegaZone's arcs of fire and under Kevin's. Screaming like a madman, he ran up the extended Wedge window and leaped in an incredible leap over the flamethrower, tackling Kevin to the floor. They rolled across the Wedge through a trash barrel in a tangled heap of limbs and laser rifle. The Knight screamed and jumped to his feet as he realized who he had just tackled. Howling with despair, the soldier raked the Wedge with full-auto laser fire, making everyone drop to the deck; one of his bolts slammed into the shield generator, which, with a shower of sparks, exploded. Then he ate his laser's muzzle. Thoroughly gross. "The shield's down!" MegaZone screamed as Coylian after Coylian poured in an incredible wave toward him. He kept the triggers down; shell casings flew over his shoulder in a never ending smoking stream. Sweat poured down his face. They overran the end of his weapon. "I can't hold!" Ben disappeared under a thrashing horde of them; Zoner followed, trying desperately to retreat and dragged down by sheer numbers. Someone screamed "DIE, Wedge scum!" "We're outnumbered!" Crocker screamed as he opened up with his M-16. "Don't think of it as being vastly outnumbered," pfloyd offered. "Think of it as having a very wide shot selection." Truly wild combat in the Wedge ensued; Crocker et al. opened up with their M-16s while Ben and MegaZone kicked and thrashed madly, with the desperate ability of people with little or, in Ben's case, no real training but lots o' adrenaline. The Knights' windbreakers were body armor; they could take four or five M-16 hits before blood was drawn. Pfloyd shouted something about buying Teflon ammo next time, which Crocker promised to make a note of and pick some up at the local death 'n destruction shop reeeeeal soon. Ben was flat on his back, a Coylian's sneakered foot pressed to his throat; the world was starting to turn red and spots were swimming in front of his eyes as his fingers lost their strength and slid from the Knight's ankle. He heard a terrible wet KRUNCH and thought his neck was broken. My God, he thought, I'm dead and I don't even realize it yet. Then the Coylian slid off him and he could breathe again. He forced himself up on an elbow and looked; the Knight of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path was the one with the broken neck. Kei had grabbed him in a nifty half-nelson-like maneuver and quite neatly rotated his head 180 degrees. He would've thanked her, but she was too busy, so he just fell back to the Lower Wedge wall. With no weapon, it was about all he could do. Zoner was still, somehow, on his feet; he grabbed whole handfuls of Coylians and slung them away from him with desperate strength. Suddenly a pair of arms grabbed him from behind, the fingers laced over the flesh of his throat; oxygen stopped coming in. He reached back; other arms pinioned his own. He tried to walk forward; something was holding his legs. A horde of the Coylians struggled madly to keep him down. Three well-placed laser shots drilled the ones holding his neck and arms through the faces as Yuri came to his rescue; released, he kicked his way free and made it to the Wedge wall with Ben. There were no more guns; all they could do now was watch. "Damn romantic, isn't it," Ben choked through a partially crushed throat. "They fight...we watch." "Well, they're better at this anyway. About all we're good for is getting ourselves killed." "I know...doesn't stop me from feeling like a total dick though...and thanks for your optimistic evaluation of our battle prowess." "Don't mention it." The first wave of Coylians were almost all dead, mowed down by the Wedge Commandos' fire; many of them had tripped and crashed over Ben and Zoner's five-foot piles of shell casings and been trampled by the second wave, including John Coyle himself, who had been shot many many many times (Crocker alone put a full clip into him) before being ground underfoot by his own troops. But they fought like madmen. Kei and Yuri disengaged themselves and fell back, not because the combat was too heavy, but because they were well and truly tired of being groped by the Knights (remember, STRAIGHT and Narrow) before killing them. Better to use ranged weapons to melee in this case. Ben saw his opportunity; he rushed forward as Kei slammed a knee into a Coylian's nose and grabbed the warrior's falling laser rifle. Then, backpedaling rapidly, he sprayed the horde with laser fire, giving her time to disengage. Tossing a second liberated rifle to Zoner alleviated Yuri's tactical disadvantage as well. The situation looked grim; of all the Wedge Rats, only Zoner, Ben, Kei, and Yuri had functional ranged weapons. The Commandos were out of ammo and the third wave of Coylians were advancing, heedless of the losses created by the merciless laser fire. Fritz and Tim were fighting them hand- to-hand now, and despite their truly superhuman skill and strength, were soon overcome by sheer numbers and flattened into the carpeting. (=|-]) "Oh hell," Crocker shouted. "KNOCK!" He wolfed the slice of pizza in his left hand as his right ran the M-16 out of ammo for the last time, then took his 1/2-level fireball spell from his jacket, pulled the pin, and threw. BLAMMO! The blast scattered dead and dying Knights almost back to the curb. And still they came. Kei pulled a minigrenade from its pouch on her left hip, the last grenade either of them had since the Battle of DAKA; she set it to impact and sent it spiraling into the middle of their thickest clump. It had the desired effect; that explosion sent Coylians back to the stone in the middle of the Quad. The last wave of Coylians, the thirty warriors remaining from a once-proud armada, charged through the window, screaming "Honor or death! Honor or death!" Ben's rifle overheated. Laser fire filled the Wedge. Erik Swimm screamed and dropped, a laser hole burned through his left shoulder. "Yuri!" Kei shouted. "(Oh how I hate to do this)--the Card! Now's the time!" Then she turned to Ben and muttered, "Down. On the floor. Now." "Shit, Kei--!" Ben cried as he dropped to the carpeting and put his hands over his head. "It's never the time for the Bloody Card," he told her as she joined him on the floor. Yuri took a small metal card from somewhere in her uniform. The stats and performance of the device immediately flashed to MegaZone's mind: The Bloody CardTM is a device roughly equating the dimensions and weight of a playing card. It is made of a tungsten- titanium alloy with a monomolecular edge. Its ion drives can sustain it for two hours at a time at true airspeeds exceeding one hundred kilometers per hour, and it has rudimentary psychokinetic control. It is somewhat inaccurate, but quite effective for crowd control, and popular among those with a flair for the dramatic. As soon as this thought finished flashing through his mind Zoner simply muttered "Oh shit" and kissed the carpet. She cast, and the Bloody Card howled out in a deadly arc, the sound of its ion drives sending chills up and down the spines of the Wedge Rats. The Card screamed in a crescent of death, sending gouts of blood fountaining into the air as it swept along the line of Coylians at around throat level. Its arc carried it through all but the last, who raised his rifle and sighted on Yuri. The Bloody Card was heading out toward the mailboxes, unable to turn tightly enough in the narrow end of the Wedge to return. Harold Mackiernan, better known simply as h, came strolling around the corner just then; the Bloody Card was heading straight for him. With nary a second thought, he snagged the gore-streaked weapon out of the air, pocketed it, and flicked a small white card of his own at the final Coylian. Distracted, the last Knight of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path caught the card offhand and looked at it. The only thing on it was a large black 1. He flipped it over. YOU CAN DIE NOW. "Thank you," he said to h, and promptly keeled over, dead. "This is yours," said h, and he tossed the Bloody Card to Yuri. "WE WON!" Crocker shouted, raising his M-16 defiantly. "WE WON!" The Wedge erupted in a tremendous cheer. And there was much rejoicing! "Hey," said Rich as he and the others finished lining the dead Coylians up on the Quad, "Coyle's not here." "What do you mean, he's not here?" Crocker demanded, slinging his M-16 and walking over. "And where the hell are Ben and Zoner?" "I've checked all the bodies twice and John Coyle is not among them. And I don't know where they are either." "That's impossible. I put a full clip into him! He was trampled under a hundred soldiers. I think Zoner hit him a couple of times! There's no way he could've been evacuated in all that confusion..." "...so where the hell is he then?" "I don't think we ought to tell Ben and Zoner about this just yet..." Stress Relief Therapy-------------------------Four Point Five "The second step to becoming a mad scientist is having a doctorate. After all, no one is going to tremble in fear at the name of the Mad Mister Rainbow." --The Mad Scientist Primer "Where the hell did the Animated Quartet go?" thought ReRob. It was a, well, UNIQUE day. He had just experienced the Wedge War. He saw the Wedge do things it has never done before. He saw anatomical organs he had never seen before. In fact, he had just finished washing some of them off this person. And now, Ben, Zoner, Kei and Yuri had gone piff on him. ReRob was on, shall we say, a mighty adrenaline rush. And he is not the type of person to inflict gratuitous violence on innocent people. Innocent inanimate objects, however, would be another thing entirely. "I think I'll take this one to the road," he thought. He walked downstairs and found his OmniSchwinn. That just wasn't enough. "I need some wheels," he thought. He caught himself. "I need some vehicleage." Too late. Michael Wheeler walked in, retrieved one of his cassettes, and walked out. ReRob never noticed this because of a rather interesting thought entering his mind. It could be done, and the research was the hardest part. "Hey, Mark, can I borrow the REF Field Guide?" "Sure, ReRob." ReRob then proceeded to grab the Invid Invasion tape and MegaZone's VCR. Mark walked downstairs and witnessed ReRob leaving with all this hardware and literature. "What the hell is that for?" "Kinemasochistics. You wouldn't believe the project we've got." ReRob locked himself into the HoloDECStation (HDS) and kludged up a window with a video input port. He plugged the VCR in, started playing the Robotech cassettes, and fed the Field Guide into a vidinput window. When the computer was done digesting up the data, ReRob called up cluless and rezzed up a VR-052 Cyclone and a suit of CVR-3 body armor. Cluless sent back a "no prob" on the CVR-3, but stopped short on the actual Cyclone. The error message was: protoculture: yaright? ReRob told the computer to fuck the protoculture and give him a Cyclone sans power unit. There are better power units than protoculture anyways. Especially when one had a VCR. Within an hour, he had fed itsnotmygoddamnplanetmonkey- boy all three Back to the Future movies. He then rezzed up the DeLorean. Cluless yaright?ed on the flux capacitor, but that was okay. He didn't want a DeLorean. He removed Mr. Fusion, and installed it in the gas tank of the Cyclone. Like, have some power. Within five minutes, ReRob learned that walking through the basement of Fuller Labs wearing futuristic body armor and pushing a variable-geometry motorcycle raises eyebrows. Telling students that this is the true power of UNIX didn't help. After a field trip to the Atwater Kent dumpster for fusion material, ReRob dropped some leftover SPAM into the gas tank, kick-started the fusion reactor, and sped off into the sunset. He only dropped the machine three times on the way off campus. All in all, it was a simple learning procedure. Mr. Fusion is many things, but it does not use a physical transmission. In other words, it's an automatic motorcycle. ReRob had ridden bicycles before, so it was just the concept of turning at higher speeds and with more weight under him. Thus, he was just about getting the hang of it and cruising down I-290 when the cops took an interest in him. The Cyclone is a rather amusing and powerful mecha unit, but it was never designed for twentieth century street use. To be sure, it carries headlights and all the normal safety features. The only problem is that there is literally nowhere to place a license plate. The only obvious spot, on the tail of the machine, is the perfect place to fry the poor aluminum off while jetting around in battloid mode. Fortunately, ReRob was wearing his CVR-3. This completely obscured his features. Besides which, he looked incredibly cool. Unfortunately, this didn't stop the main problem, that being black and whites behind him with sirens wailing. "But," ReRob thought, "Let's get real. A motorcycle on an interstate with a top speed of over two hundred miles per hour versus Ford mega-sedans. Null perspiration." And with that, he experienced the joy and dangers involved with removing the front wheel from the tar. He eased off on the throttle, reminded himself that he was wielding a fusion powered road machine, and figured that while high rates of velocity were necessary, large values for higher derivatives of position were right out. The cops were no problem in about fifteen seconds (that's one combat round for you Palladium gamers), but a new difficulty arose. Even in Massachusetts, driving around at one hundred fifty miles an hour creates interesting problems in traffic avoidance, meeting other vehicles at relative velocities of over seventy miles an hour. ReRob slipped into a game of Pole Position in his mind, and survived for the next minute or so. Then he ran across a strip of traffic flying formation; there was no way around. A voice from the old Gauntlet game intruded upon his thoughts: "Wedge Rat is about to die." He checked and realized that he was fresh out of quarters. This was his last game. Flub this, and it was all over. There was only one way out. It was untested, and would probably remove several parts of his anatomy along with his all-important ugly baritone singing voice. "Oh well," he thought, "Not like I'm going to have a use for it if I end up in this guy's hatchback." He pushed a lever from the down to the up position. The bike proceeded to behave in several ways that bikes never normally react. First thing it did was microjet up to leap over the line of traffic in question. That was the simple part. Then the front faring started acting up. It split in two and attached itself to ReRob's chest armor. The engine, it seemed, was not an internal combustion engine at all, but just a latex item that looked like one. It rapidly deflated itself. The skid plate moved up and became a chest piece. By almost sheer coincidence, it linked perfectly with the armor codpiece: ReRob was still a baritone. The entire back of the motorcycle, tail through fuel tank/Mr. Fusion, slid behind ReRob, folded up, and attached to his back. The wheels swung around in a rather unbalancing position and deployed jets. ReRob was now a quasi-cyborg, over three hundred fifty pounds of flesh, metal, plastic, and ceramic, and was now hovering over the northbound lane of I- 290, thinking "Neat!" He hovered over to the southbound lane, waved to the cops as they passed, and landed on the grassy strip next to the breakdown lane. He began the sequence which would allow him to extricate himself from his bike and ride it again. But only one thought took up his frontal lobes: "Shouldn't I be thinking something profound here?" Worcester Nightlife--------------------------------------FIVE "[quote deleted]" --Macquivr (Q) Later, down at the Thai Orchid (a local Thai restaurant, obliviously), we find Zoner, Yuri, Ben, and Kei enjoying a rather well prepared meal. Kei and Yuri were wearing stunning evening gowns which had set both Zoner and Ben back about a term's spending money. "So how are you enjoying your stay at the Worst Place Imaginable--ahem--Whoopie Tech so far?" inquired 'Zone. "So far, so good. Do you normally have so much violence on campus?" asked Kei. "No. It isn't normally this bad," --sideways glance at Ben-- "I can't figure out why it has been so bad." (elbow) "Side effect. It'll pass," Ben parried. (poke) "So, what is there to do in...." Yuri began. "PASS THE SALT NOW!" screamed Ben, his hand suddenly bending his fork. "I knew I shouldn't have let you order." "Iai!" Kei shouted, snagging the salt shaker from Ben's hand. "Me first! This stuff is deadly!" "So I like spicy food," Zone replied with an evil smirk. "You were saying, Yuri?" "Yes, I wanted to know if there was anything interesting to do in Worcester." "May I reply to that?" interjected Ben. "Why not?" Ben got up from the booth and began to pace, his hands folded behind his back. "From the home office in Schenectady, New York: The top ten things to do in Worcester on Saturday night. "Ten: Drive to Boston. "Nine: Drive to Boston for the evening. "Eight: Why not drive to Boston? "Seven: Driving to Boston is a definite possibility... "Six: Drive to Boston. "Five: If you're feeling particularly ambitious, you could drive to Boston. "Four: Drive to Boston. "Three: It wouldn't hurt to drive to Boston. "Two: Go to Spag's. Bet you thought I was going to say drive to Boston didn't you?" And the number one thing to do in Worcester on Saturday night is:" "Drive to Boston?" hazarded Kei. "Survey says: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Thank you for playing. No, the number one thing to do in Worcester on a Saturday night is: "Get mugged!" "Bravo! Now sit down and stop making a spectacle. I can't take you anywhere," observed Zone, eliciting a chuckle from both Kei and Yuri. "True, since your car is in the shop!" Ben jabbed. "Ouch! Low blow! So the Daytona from Hell is ill, I'll have it back on Monday, for 300 bucks which I can't afford." "What is this Daytona from Hell?" asked Kei. "I'll explain it later," replied Yuri. The collective group fell into standard dinner rapport, occasionally interrupted by Ben's pleas for the salt to cut the spice. As the evening progressed it was obvious that Zoner and Yuri gravitated into one pair and Ben and Kei another. (Kinda like bookends.) <> After dinner the quartet began a leisurely stroll back to campus, veering around the Centrum to prolong the walk; after all it was a pleasant night. They were just strolling along when Kei reached over to get Yuri's attention. And when they made contact they froze. Their gaze seemed to be focused at infinity. "Zoner, I think we have a problem..." muttered Ben. "Obliviously, Ben, they appear to be having one of their psychic flashes," observed Zoner. Slapping a hand to his forehead, Ben replied, "Duhh. So what do we do?" "We wait." A few tense seconds later the Angels broke out of it. Collapsing into Ben's arms, Kei gasped, "What was that?" Yuri, being similarly supported by MegaZone, replied, "There's an attack coming." "COYLIANS?!" Ben and Zoner exclaimed in perfect harmony. "No, it seems to be giant humanoid robots or something like that," Yuri continued. "Why is it always giant... humanoid... robots???" Ben murmured in a tired voice. "We have to find a defensible position!" Zoner blurted in a rare burst of logic. "We could scale this building," suggested Kei. "100% NutraSweet," responded Ben in his Ad-Man-Voice. "Huh?" Yuri questioned. "Never mind," Zoner cut in. "I have an idea..." "Uh oh..." interrupted Ben. "As I was saying, I have an idea. The Galleria's parking garage is right over here." The quartet hurried off towards the garage as the sound of an approaching horde filled the air. Panting heavily, Zoner declared, "We're here. Any sign of the enemy?" "Well, since we're being obvious...how about that large pack of soldiers and the attack choppers?" panted Ben. "You guys are out of shape," observed Kei. "I'm soooooo sorry," Zoner snapped. "Kei, we have better things to think about. Like that horde over there," Yuri interjected. Ben collapsed into a coughing fit. Noticing this, Kei asked, "What's wrong with him?" "Asthma. He'll either recover or die. Don't worry about him. Worry about THEM!" Zoner shrieked. ZARK! A laser bolt slammed into the wall next to Yuri, who then pulled her blaster out of her purse. "You brought that to dinner?" Zoner asked incredulously. "Sure, so did Kei. Didn't you bring a weapon?" "NO! I don't OWN one! Before this past week I never NEEDED one!" "What about him?" Kei gestured to Ben's choking form. "I severely doubt it!" Zoner snapped. "Unless you count his Buck knife, which personally I don't!" ZARK! ZARK! ZARK! KA-ZAP!!! More lasers sliced chunks from the concrete. Followed by a large particle blast. ZARK! ZARK! Kei and Yuri returned fire. ZARK! ZARK! They began dropping the oncoming horde with ease. Well, they dropped, but some began to get back up. "Oh shit! BOOMERS! How... Never mind, WHO?" Zoner exclaimed. "Boomers? The deli?" Ben asked, staggering to his feet, the spasm almost over. "The killer 'bots from Bubble Gum Crisis!" "Oh. Them.... OH! THEM! GAAAH!" Ben said as the importance of this fact dawned on him. "Boomers? Bubble Gum Crisis?" Kei and Yuri asked in stereo. "Never mind! Keep shooting!" Ben and Zone snapped in unison. "I'm getting tired of being told to never mind," Yuri said to anyone who was listening, who at the time was no one. "Look. Over there!" Zoner said, gesturing to a pair of racing bikes. "Think we can hotwire them?" Ben asked. "We can damn well try." "Hey! The keys are in them!" "Oh... Look," Zoner said, gesturing to the Becker College parking sticker. "Natch," Ben quipped. VVRROOMM!! SSQQUUEEAALL!! "Get on!" Zoner yelled. Yuri leapt onto his bike, while Kei mounted Ben's. "Hang on, I haven't driven one of these in over a month," Ben said. "So, I haven't driven one in at least 15 years. No time like the present to learn," Zoner replied with a smirk. "What? Are you crazy?" "Well, my philosophy is, if you try to stay sane in life, it'll just drive you crazy. So, you may as well go crazy now and have fun with life." Then he grinned darkly and slowly intoned, "It's a couple of miles to campus...we don't know what we have for gas...we don't smoke...it's dark...and we're wearing trouble consultants." "Hit it." Ben finished the thought and fired his bike out of the garage, with Zoner wildly trying to keep his own under control behind him. <> The bikes screamed from the garage, flying through the troop of Boomers and under the three attack choppers. ZARK! The remaining Boomers shed their human guise in a gross but effective manner and fired their thrusters to give chase. Their lasers and particle cannon lashed out at the fleeing bikes. Kei and Yuri began returning fire. They were disappointed by their lack of results. "No use fighting these 'bots, we've gotta lose them!" noted Yuri. "Ben! The tunnel!" MegaZone screamed, gesturing wildly, then turned onto Main Street. Ben followed suit, before realizing what Zoner meant. "Are the choppers that dumb?" queried Ben, more to himself than anyone else. "Let's find out." Zoner gunned his engine to a rating several octaves above manufacturers' recommendations. He then remembered the joys of third gear. Shift-lurch! Meanwhile, Ben was all the way to fourth (sick minds! On a moving superbike?!?! Talk about P-points!) and screaming almost as loud as his motorcycle. Air moved against his right ear and formed into the words "How fast are we going?" [Normally, he would have found such a phenomenon intolerably stimulating...but not here.] "Do you really wanna know?" he replied beyond the top of his lungs. "Uh...hmm." "I didn't think so!" Going the wrong way down Main Street into the tunnel is generally not recommended by the Worcester Police Department. However, the Worcester penal code was probably not written considering the needs of motorcyclists who have to deal with attack helicopters. Ben and Zoner avoided the few cars going the right way that time of night, entered the tunnel, then saw a flash of light shove its way through the walls. "Yep. They're that dumb," shouted Ben. "One down, two to go, not to mention Boomer troops." He found it amazing that anyone stupid enough not to look for large stationary objects like, say, tunnel roofs, would be piloting one of those aerial juggernauts. *slap* Duuuh. A Saab 900 Turbo loomed, or at least as close as a Saab 900 Turbo gets to looming, ahead; Zoner hollered something unintelligible and ducked around it. It skidded, trying to dodge him, right into Ben's path. Ben knew a bit about motorcycles; for one thing, he knew that, with the extra weight the machine was hauling, an attempt to dodge violently enough to have any chance at success would put them on the side, skidding under the Saab's wheels. "Kei!" he screamed. "When I tell you to, lean back!" "WHAT?!" "Just do it, trust me! Ready? NOW!" As she threw her weight back, so did he, while tossing a downshift and ramming the throttle open. The racer responded with a howl, its rear wheel clawing at pavement. The front wheel rose from the ground and struck the speeding Saab's hood above the front bumper. Momentum, a bit of skill, and a shit load of luck carried them up and over; the bike slammed into the street front-wheel-first, throwing Ben violently against the handlebars and Kei violently against Ben. They wobbled, dipped, ducked, and then recovered--all at sixty miles per hour. "You ok?" Kei shouted. "Fine, you?" A light squeeze to his shoulder reassured him that she was. Zoner jerked his transmission while forgetting the clutch (hey, it doesn't look like a stick-shift), and Yuri responded by sinking her left hand deeper into his shoulder as he tried to look back at Ben and Kei. He still didn't quite believe he had seen that. The twin motorcyclists found a dead end, and geeked the second 'copter on a conveniently placed costumed, antennaed figure who then leapt across the alley as though nothing had happened, a pair of what appeared to be high-tech binoculars hanging around his neck, accompanied by a large rabbitlike figure with wings. Both bikes turned around, and four pairs of eyes found the third attack chopper hovering, waiting for them. MegaZone gunned his engine first, with a battle cry of "Shiiiiiiiit!" The chopper responded by exploding in a tidy fireball and falling just behind the twin bikes. Zoner and Ben raced down Main St. while Kei and Yuri handily plugged the remaining Boomers. It hadn't taken them long to discover the head was the weak spot. "Wow...neat..." Zoner was busy admiring the destruction when he banked around a corner and nearly got his head ripped off by a construction barricade. The words MAX HEADROOM 5'3" zipped by as he threw an instinctive downshift and ducked around it; he was feeling pretty damn proud of himself for that maneuver when he hit a Jersey barrier. The front fork of the bike responded to the stress with a big, very definitive "NOT" and totally collapsed. Zone's only warning of such impending disaster was the sensation of Yuri's fingernails apparently attempting to etch her initials into his collarbone. MegaZone hung in the air in much the same way that a B-52 bomber with no functional engines, a full bomb load, half of one wing blown off, the other wing completely severed, a fire near the fuel tanks, and a dead crew would, given the opportunity, and landed on his back in a dirt pile. He opened his eyes just in time to see Yuri land gracefully ten feet in front of him and have the front tire bounce by to add to his injuries. Ben succeeded, surprisingly, in a stylish skid-to-a- halt-with-left-side-banked-and-left-foot-planted stop, grinned, and announced in his finest Sports-Event-Announcer- Voice, "And for MegaZone's incredible dismount: a 9, a 9.6, a 9.9, a 4.2 from the Bulgarian judge, and a 9.6! That's good enough to move him on to the gold medal round. He would've had an even better score, but he took a couple of extra steps on that landing, and it cost him in the final standings. Thank you for playing `How the fuck do I drive this thing?'!" "Very goddamn funny. I'm in a great deal of pain. I am NOT enjoying this. Do you think we could possibly obtain some medical attention, NOW?" Zoner snarled. "What, don't you have a DocWagon contract?" Ben chuckled. "Oh, a comedian! This is REALITY, not some story from Shadowrun." "This isn't Reality. Vaughn's Reality. This is a motorcycle accident in downtown Worcester." "BEN!" "So sorry. Shall I call an ambulance?" "If you would BE SO KIND!" Kei dismounted, chuckling, and walked over to check on Yuri. Yuri, of course, being used to this kind of event, had landed fine. Ben hopped off his bike and checked it over; the front fork was annoyingly bent from the leap he had taken over the Saab, and the finish on the front fairing was dinged. "I have to get a tougher bike," he observed, wincing and rubbing his shoulder a bit. "I think I'll achieve unconsciousness now," Zoner said, closing his eyes. "What? Did that hurt him?" Yuri asked. "Well, actually YES!" Zoner declared in a Carlinesque manner. A VR-052 Battler Cyclone-clad figure, smoke still streaming from a forearm rocket launcher, clunked onto the scene. Ben, Zoner, Kei, and Yuri looked at the warrior and prepared to square off for another combat. For Zoner this involved attempting to peel himself out of the MegaZone- shaped dent in the sand. The figure flipped the faceplate back from the helmet, drew a curly-q in the air, and said, "Gweepings." The quartet simultaneously exclaimed, "ReRob!?" MegaZone then collapsed to his back again, letting out a soft groan as ribs grated together. Strange and Mysterious Ways-------------------------------SIX "Character is what you are in the dark." --Lord John Whorfin The last tap had gone in that afternoon. The newly- pilfered DECstation 5200, overthruster, was linked to the net with an illegal Ethernet and powered by a tap from the reactor in Washburn which was also extremely illegal; what none of the NukeEng students realized was that the reactor was no longer a puny Uranium-235 10-kilowatt reactor. Now it was a radium-reinforced fission unit capable of powering a Valkyrie fighter in sustained combat. (As if any Valkyrie pilot would go into combat powered by a fission reactor. Yeah, right.) No one in the NE department noticed any difference; all the extra power was going to power overthruster and an assembly line. From his headquarters in the (sub^5)basement of Alden Hall, Largo watched as the last vid display went to static. "DAMN! They're better than I thought. No," he reconsidered hastily, "they're just lucky. Next time I won't underestimate them," Largo sneered. "Entropy! Do you have any ideas?" "We could create more Boomers. Or perhaps some Invid," Entropy, aka Larry Foard, suggested, looking up from his DECstation 5200. "No! We must develop a better battle plan. These Wedge Rats seemed to be skilled in repelling direct attacks. We must try subterfuge. We will undermine their efforts to stop us by striking at their weak points," Largo ranted. "I don't know. I don't really have much against them. After all, I am considered to be a Wedge Rat too," Larry protested. "Silence! I am paying you well! After all, it was you who brought me to this world. You and your gweeping! If you hadn't hacked your `overthruster' into `itsnotmygoddamn- planetunderstandmonkeyboy' and started playing with clucomp I would have never existed in this reality! But since I'm here I might as well flex my muscles and take control of this worthless campus. Once I control Whoopie Tech I'll be able to use its resources to build the army I will need to control the world," Largo euthusiastically decried. His face darkened to an evil sneer as he finished with, "And now...you know too much." "So, what are the weak points you spoke of?" Larry asked, utterly unconcerned. "Their emotions! They actually care for each other. We must find a way to drive a wedge between these Wedge Rats. We must find a way to destroy this...Dirty Pair and use this to destroy the Rats emotionally," Largo declared. "The loss of those two women will deprive them of a good deal of their combat skill as well..." "Wedge between Wedge Rats? Sheesh!" Larry mumbled. "What was that?" "I said, `whatever'...I suppose it's up to me to find a way to do this, right?" "Of course. That is what I pay you for!" "Fine, so leave me alone and let me get to work." With this Entropy bent over the keyboard to overthruster and began hacking the source to clucomp. "This may take a while." Ben crawled into his sleeping bag, never more grateful in his life for a warm, semi-comfortable place to sleep. (Just lucky it was his turn for the bed.) He was quite surprised, then, to be awakened a few seconds later by Kei, who was crawling in beside him. "What," he inquired curiously, "are you doing?" "It's cold on the floor--you've got room," she replied. Ben tried desperately to keep his head from spinning; he needed all the brainpower he could muster at three-thirty in the Oh my God, what are we doing up this late 'ning to figure out what was going on. Could it be that this incredibly beautiful girl from the inside of a hard disk found him-- short, squat him--attractive somehow? The very thought was inconceivable. Women thought of him as a friend, a confidant, a non-threatening male presence--never as an object of romance. It was at that moment that she shifted closer; before they had been in the same sleeping bag, but separate, and the balance on the narrow college bed was somewhat precarious. Now she had shifted closer; all along them, there was contact. Kei had removed her invisible polycarbonate- laminate body armor; all that stood between them was his clothing and her 3WA uniform. If he hadn't've been so bone- tired, Ben would've found that unbearably exciting. As it was, he did nothing but fall extremely asleep. That was ok, so did Kei. <> Zoner led Yuri into NY8XW305 (well, that was the license plate on the door; actually it was Ellsworth 7). Logan was sleeping on the fold-a-couch in the living room. Apparently he had anticipated being thrown out of the room by Zoner again and decided he didn't want to be awakened again. "Are you OK?" Yuri asked, concerned. "Well, I have contusions, lacerations, two broken ribs, and my entire body hurts, but other than that I'm just F-I-N-E," Zoner intoned solemnly. "Fine?" "No, F-I-N-E: Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional," Zoner answered. Yuri chuckled. "Well, your sense of humor isn't hurt." "That's about the only thing that isn't." "Oh, really," Yuri said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face. "Uh, Yuri. What are you thinking?" "Wouldn't you like to know." "MMgggaazznn, thht yoo???" Logan muttered. "No, you're dreaming," Zoner whispered. "KK..." Logan mumbled and rolled over. "Let's go upstairs before we wake him up," Zoner said, waving his arm toward the staircase. "Okay," Yuri said, that same infuriating grin on her face. Yuri led the way up to Zoner's room. Once inside Yuri closed the door and locked it. "Ummm, Yuri. I may be naive, but I'm not stupid. What exactly are you planning?" Zoner asked after noticing her locking the door. "Well, I wanted to tell you that you were great out there today." "And for this you needed to lock the door?" The reality of the situation was slowly dawning on him. "Well, no. But I also wanted to tell you that, well, that I'm attracted to you." Zoner took a step back. "Ah, right. Sure. Listen, you're a fictional character and I'm a screwed up college super-sophomore. I don't think this is gonna to work." "Why not? You don't find me attractive?" Yuri asked, mildly annoyed. "Hey, whoa. I never said that. Of course I do. You're interesting, beautiful, and being with you is certainly never boring," Zoner defended. "So, what's the problem?" Yuri asked again, walking over to Zoner. "I don't know. I was never one to just jump into a relationship. This is moving a little too quick, my head is spinning. I almost DIED tonight. Now, I don't care about death. It doesn't scare me. But I don't want to die just yet," Zoner emphatically stated. "So I'm a hazard to be avoided?" Yuri asked, apparently insulted. "No, no, no. I don't know what I mean. I guess I'm just surprised. Kei, well, I would sort of expect this from Kei, which reminds me, I wonder what--no, I don't wanna know," he said, lapsing briefly into It's-late-I'm-tired-I'm- talking-faster-than-I-think mode before recovering and continuing with, "She seems to move pretty quick, but I guess coming from you it sort of surprised me. Especially since you're so beautiful and this school has a male to female ratio of about 5 to 1. You could have just about anyone you wanted. So why me?" Zoner asked. "Well, you don't run away when you see us for one, even though you know about our past. Second, you're interesting. I enjoy talking to you. You're a nice guy." "Ouch! Nice GuyTM! That's almost as bad as having a great personality!" "I was about to say that," Yuri mumbled. "And could you really handle being my SO? I'm Joe Average when it comes to looks. I'm overweight and out of shape. You always seem to go for, well, for.." "Hunks?" Yuri ventured. "Yeah, hunks," Zoner continued. "So, are you still interested in me?" "Yes. There should be much more to a relationship than looks. I LIKE you. You actually talk to me and are interested in what I say. You like me for who I am, not just for my body." "Well, I like that too," Zoner jabbed. "Oh, really," Yuri said, that smile returning. "So, let's see if I can make you forget your injuries." "Wait a minute, Yuri, I--mmmpphhh--" Zoner's response was cut off as Yuri kissed him full on the lips. "Do you still have cold feet?" Yuri asked, a twisted little grin on her face. "Well, actually yes, but I think that's because the window is open," Zoner joked. "Oh, come here," Yuri said, pulling Zoner towards the bunk. Ben awoke at ten-fourteen the next morning, having had the most bizarre dream of his life. Giant 'bots, lasers, motorcycles, and God only knows what else. It was all a purple haze. A finger tapped him on the shoulder; he rolled a bit and peeled his protesting eyes open. His vision got as close to focused as it ever got without his glasses; Kei was propped up on an elbow, grinning at him in that annoying way that morning people do. Even with his unfocused vision and the fact that she apparently had also just awakened, she was beautiful; Ben was immediately quite conscious of what hell he looked like in the morning, and immediately tried to slip down into the bag again. "Stop that," Kei chided him. "What're you hiding for?" "I look like hell," Ben replied. "Not to me you don't." "Oh, come on." Ben surfaced, a tad of defensive ire arising inside him. "Don't pull this routine with me; I've been down this path before. You could have any guy you want--don't try and make me think you find me attractive. I'm not that stupid." Kei looked hurt. "Why would I lie to you?" "I don't know, but it's been done to me before. I'm very familiar with the concept of cruelty." "I do find you attractive," she said. "You're a very special guy. For one thing, you don't scream and run the instant you see us on the horizon, like most men." "Yeah, well, I'm for certain not the kind of..." "Hunk?" "Yeah, whatever...I'm not the kind of guy you usually look for." "Let me let you in on a little secret. Huge, muscular hunks are always either one of three things. Unmercifully stupid, taken, or gay. You are obviously none of the above." "Yeah, well, be that as it may, I'll believe this particular bit of weirdness when I see it." "You honestly don't believe me? Fine! I'll prove it to you." And with that, she grabbed his head and planted an ardent kiss on him. When she released him a minute and a half later, he let out a small "gaaah?" and slumped back on the pillow. "You see?" she said to him. "I could have any man I want, you said so yourself. So why would I have wasted something like that on someone I didn't find attractive? Wow, you're paranoid." "No," he said weakly, "I'm not Paranoid. Jen's Paranoid. I'm Gryphon." "What? I'm confused now." "No, you're not Confused. Rob Crocker's Confused. You're Kei." "Gweeps," Kei said, shrugging, and kissed him again. "Wait a second," he said, pushing her gently aside. "This is... wrong." "Why is it wrong? We're both mature individuals--you're eighteen, I'm nineteen--we can make our own decisions. I like you, you like me, where's the problem?" "You're not nineteen, Kei...you're four days old. You were created out of thin air on Wednesday, I'm still not sure how...what I am sure of is that I'm the one who did it. I'm your creator, for God's sake." "So? Where's the harm? There's nothing genetic involved, no precedent...I'm attracted to you, hard as that may seem for you to believe, and you're quite apparently attracted to me...so why not?" He put on his glasses for a second and looked at her; focused, she was even more beautiful. His senses reeled. "Can't see me? Are you nearsighted?" He nodded. She took his glasses and laid them on the trunk. "Guess I'll have to get closer then." "Kei--" "Shh," she silenced him with a fingertip's touch to his lips. "Don't worry about it. We're here, it's working, it's right. Don't argue with it--you're only arguing with yourself if you do that." She smiled a cockeyed little grin. "So let's...experiment, shall we?" <> He didn't make it to many afternoon Wedgely things that day. The Mellow Day------------------------------------------SEVEN "Things we do instead of doing our homework." --Zoner <> Ben wandered into the Wedge that afternoon around five, wearing a t-shirt that said "Operation Zenith--WE NEVER FAIL" and a strange, inscrutable smile; Kei was with him, wearing an exact duplicate of his shirt. They settled into a Wedge booth; he opened up his backpack, removed a largish printout, and they began to read, the very picture of serene relaxation. "Hey, Gryph!" ReRob called as he entered. "Where were you all this afternoon?" "In my room," Ben replied without looking up. "You overslept?" "Something like that." He was steadfastly remaining mysterious about whatever he had been doing; that confused ReRob, but there was really a good reason for it. The last thing he wanted to discuss with ReRob was purity loss. What was the purity loss for making it with a cartoon character? One you brought to life? He didn't want to think about it. He was just too damned happy. "What do you mean, `Something like that'? Either you overslept or you didn't..." ReRob's voice trailed off as an unsettling thought occurred to him. "Unless... no. Tell me you didn't--" "Didn't what?" MegaZone asked, walking in from the gweepery's direction with another silly smirk on his face and Yuri at his side. "He didn't make it out of his room this afternoon," said ReRob, angling a thumb at Ben. "So I asked him if he overslept and he said, `Something like that.'" "So?" said Zoner. "Big deal." "For that matter, where've you been?" MegaZone replied, "You live with me, remember?" "Oh yeah. So you're just getting up? What time did you get into bed?" "Yes, and about 3 or 4 AM. But I didn't get to sleep for a few hours." "What does that mean?" ReRob asked. Zoner replied with his patented smirk. "Why is everyone in obscurity mode today?" ReRob demanded. "This is getting frustrating." "I don't feel frustrated," Ben said calmly, putting his feet up on the Wedge table and flopping the printout into his lap. "You feel frustrated, Zoner?" MegaZone sat down in the side of the booth, put up his feet, cracked a Dew, the beverage of the Gods, and responded, "No, can't say as I do...Yuri?" "No frustration here," Yuri replied, settling gracefully into the booth next to him and opening her own Dew. "Kei?" "Not a bit." She smiled and leaned closer against Ben's shoulder as he leafed through the printout. ReRob caught a glimpse of the burst sheet; it was the Principia Discordia. Ben took a sip of his Old Tyme Jamaican Style Ginger Beer, almost managed to not wince, and then handed it to Kei, who slugged it in an impressive manner (Meta Chi nick for OTJSGB: Drano) before handing it back. "See?" said Ben with a grin. "Nobody's frustrated. It's a totally mellow day." He went back to reading. ReRob started to get some inkling of what was going on; even for the nigh-oblivious, the signposts here were just too obvious to miss. "So, what DID keep you up last night, Zoner?" ReRob persisted. "Losing P-points," Zoner jabbed. "Ahem, right. Ben, what were you doing?" "Last night? Sleeping," Ben answered truthfully, eliciting a sidelong glance from Zoner and returning an earnest little nod. Crocker walked in and asked about the same questions ReRob did to Ben and Zoner. He then turned to ReRob, who was covered with minor scrapes and bruises. "Looks like you had some fun last night. Do I know her?" "No, but you should. She's really into inflicting pain. It's her entire mission in life." "Sounds kinky!" "Not really kinky, just painful. But, Gaah!, she knows how to ride. Trust me, you two would mesh well together. I'll get one for you." Crocker turned and left the room more Confused than ever. Ktefft approached the four smug Wedge residents. "Um, can I talk to you?" Kevin asked, gesturing towards Zoner. Zoner got up, wincing from the pain of his broken ribs. Yuri began to get up with him, but Zoner motioned her to stay. He told her, "This will only take a minute." "Whassup?" Zoner asked. "I need to talk to you about those two," Kevin said, motioning towards the Pair with his head. "Yeah, what about?" "Kelli pointed them out to me, and I think there is something strange about those two women." "Strange? As in magically active?" "Well, yeah. They look different." "Worse that Paul?" "No, no. Paul is DIFFERENT. They just look strange." "Kevin, they are psionically active. They're an ESPer team. Random, somewhat inaccurate, and certainly annoying gestalt contact clairvoyance. I've seen it, it's no big thing." "Oh, well, that explains it." "Tell you what. Take them over to Higgins House on the full moon. I think it's the 23rd." "Ok. Will do. You doing a Shadowrun this Tuesday?" "Don't think so. Someone else is." "Ok, seeya 'round." MegaZone walked back over to the Wedge cubicle and sat down next to Yuri, wincing again. Yuri cuddled up to him. "What did he want?" Yuri asked. "Not much. He just commented on the psionic powers you two have." "How did he know about them?" Kei asked. "Long story. Let's just say that Kevin knows these things, OK?" Zoner answered. "Ok, I guess." Kei replied. "Hey, I wasn't done reading that page." "Oh, sorry." Ben flipped back a page. Badger walked into the Wedge, hugging everyone she knew, which included Zoner. When she hugged him Yuri visibly stiffened. "'Tis ok, Yuri. She's just a friend," Zoner said, trying to calm her. "Has anyone seen Entropy?" Badger asked. There was a resounding chorus of 'no' and then it struck everyone. No one had seen Larry in a long time. A few of them wondered what the computer god could be up to. Oh well, he would probably be on the Encore. "Have someone at the Wedge terms do a Super-Who," Zoner suggested. "Good idea." Badger said as she walked off. A few minutes after she left Zoner looked around and asked, "Ten Minute Walk?", this being the standard colloquial statement signifying a trip to Playoff Entertainment, the local electronic reflex testing center, aka arcade. Why it is called Ten Minute Walk is another story altogether which we will not go into now. The replies were all negative, except Yuri's. "What's Ten Minute Walk?" she asked. "It's an arcade, you know, video games. Sort of electronic combat simulations. Things like that," Zoner replied. "Sounds interesting, let's go." "Ok. Anyone else?" There was an overwhelming wave of apathy and general negative responsiveness. So Zoner and Yuri just got up, said their goodbyes, and left the Wedge. Unsafe At Any Speed-------------------------------------EIGHT "You're drunk. Give me the keys. I'll drive." --Stevie Wonder As they walked across Institute Road to the Ellsworth parking lot, dodging speeding traffic on the way, Yuri asked "Can I drive?" "I dunno, can you?" Zoner responded. "You know what I mean. I need more experience driving your cars." "Well, it is a company car and I'm not supposed to let anyone else drive it..." "Oh, please," Yuri whined, batting her eyelashes and making herself look irresistible. It worked. "Ok. Just take it easy." The car was easy to find. It was a bright red Daytona ES with New York vanity plates which read, surprise, MEGAZONE. Yuri slid into the driver's seat and adjusted it to fit her form; Zoner slid into the passenger seat, slamming his head on the door frame in the process. "You know what you're doing right?" Zoner asked, genuinely concerned...about the car of course. "Yes, I turn the key to start it. And I shift with this and the pedal on the right is the gas, the left it the brake," Yuri answered condescendingly. Luckily the car was an automatic, so there was no clutch for Zoner to worry about. "Ok. So let's go. Take a right out of the lot, and a left onto Institute. Then a left onto Park." Yuri backed out of the parking space and drove out onto the streets of Worcester. She did fine, maybe using just a little too much of the turbo. "Just keep driving down this way, it's a ways down," Zoner instructed. Everything went fine until the guy in the Probe cut Yuri off. "Hey, who does he think he is?!" Yuri exclaimed. "Just a Masshole, don't worry about it. You get used to it," Zoner calmly replied. <> "Well, it isn't very nice. I think I should teach him a lesson." With that she dropped the accelerator to the floor. "Ah, Yuri, what the hell are you doing?" Zoner shrieked, suddenly panicked. "It's ok. I'm know what I'm doing," Yuri replied as she pulled alongside the Probe. "Don't do this Yuriiiiiii!" Yuri swerved toward the Probe, trying to cut him off, but she misjudged the distance and slammed the driver's side of the Daytona from Hell into the right front corner of the Probe. "My car!" Zoner screamed. "Sorry," Yuri apologized. "Watch the road!" "Ayieeee!" Yuri shrieked as she swerved left to avoid the large truck in her lane. This of course caused her to sideswipe the Probe, which then crossed the two oncoming lanes of traffic and slammed into the CVS across the street. Inside the store pfloyd looked up at the tremendous noise as the Probe removed most of the entryway corner of the store. "I hope he'll be alright," Yuri said, glancing back at the crash. "The road!" Zoner screamed, covering his eyes. Yuri turned back just in time to avoid the line of stopped traffic in her lane. She swerved into the left lane and shot through the intersection with Chandler Street, clipping two cars which were passing through the intersection. Zoner was beyond coherency, he just moaned quite a bit. Especially when he felt the Daytona impact something. Yuri was busy dodging traffic and violating every known traffic law in the process. She swerved back to the right to avoid the oncoming traffic, then onto the sidewalk to avoid the traffic on that side of the road. This accomplished the removal of most of the right side of the car on the fronts of the buildings along that side. "Yuri, why don't you use the brake?" "What? Oh, yeah." She successfully brought the car to a halt in the parking lot of State Liquor. Zoner got out and assessed the damage. There was a lot to assess. "M-m-m-m-my car! What have you done. It's dead!" "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." "You didn't mean it?! You didn't MEAN it?! What is that supposed to mean???" Zoner screamed. "It's not my fault! I'm not used to these vehicles. And if that guy hadn't cut me off in the first place..." "Please be quiet. I really don't want to hurt you." "Well, I was just saying..." "Please, just don't say anything. I like you too much to kill you." Zoner added the damage up in his head. The entire fascia was gone. Both fenders were destroyed. Hell, the entire right side of the car was ground down. Both mirrors were gone. The driver's door was dented. All of the air skirts were FUBAR. And there was some liquid dripping onto the ground from under the hood. After composing himself as best he could Zoner spoke. "Yuri, get in the passenger side. And don't say a word." Yuri was about to say something, but after looking at the cold fire in Zoner's eyes she thought it might not be a good idea. Zoner drove back to campus, using the back roads so as not to pass by any of the destruction Yuri had caused, mumbling the whole time about repairs, cops, and mayhem. He parked the Daytona from Hell in the Ellsworth parking lot and said to Yuri, "Leave me alone. Please." "Listen, I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault, really, I..." "No more. Please, just go back to the Wedge. I'll be over, later." Yuri exited the car and strolled over to the Wedge. Zoner just sat there beating his head against the steering wheel, mumbling about being killed by his parents and how much the cost to repair the damage would be. "'Lo, Yuri," said Ben as Yuri entered the Wedge. "You're back early..." "I, ah, had a little trouble with the car..." "A little trouble?" Kei said with a smile. "He let you drive? Ha! Doesn't he have any idea how stupid that is?" "And just what is that supposed to mean?" "To put it simply, you can't drive worth a damn." "Oh really." Yuri considered her options for a moment, then sat down in another Wedge booth, tossing back, "Well, at least I don't have to hold my breath to fit into my battlearmor." "THAT'S NOT FAIR!" Kei screamed, leaping up. "You're the one who adjusted all the locking plates so the damn thing didn't fit!" "That's because I wore it last. It fit me perfectly," said Yuri with a small grin. Ben was having too good a day to allow this to continue. Rising from his seat, he said calmly, "Please...it's too nice a day...Yuri, what exactly did you do to MegaZone's car?" Yuri described in gritty detail the entire affair. "Ouch," Ben winced as she finished. "That has to hurt." Then an evil smile spread across his face. "Come upstairs for a second...I have something in my room I think you should have..." After Zoner sat beating his head for fifteen or twenty minutes, ReRob strolled up to the open driver's window. "So, I hear you didn't have such a good trip." With deliberate slowness Zoner lifted his head from the wheel and turned towards ReRob. "I know where you sleep. It would be wise not to anger me further," Zoner intoned solemnly. "Tell you what, let me have the car for a while and I'll fix it up for you." "ReRob, I think this car is beyond repair. My parents are going to kill me. I'm dead," Zoner replied, letting his head bounce off of the steering wheel again. "Why don't you let me worry about that. Give me a couple of weeks, and don't tell anyone about this." "I have to go home for break on the nineteenth. And what about the police?" "Well, just hope no one saw you license plate." "Yeah, right. I think I'll go Wedgitate." When he arrived in the Wedge, Ben, Kei, and Yuri were discussing spectacular car crashes, space station explosions, and other unnatural disasters. Yuri was wearing a shirt Zoner didn't recognize--he hadn't given it to her, anyway. It was white with snappy black rolled cuffs on short sleeves and black stripes over the shoulders. He was almost calmed down by this point; he walked deliberately over to the booth and sat carefully down. Then he saw the front of Yuri's shirt. KAMIKAZE RACING TEAM Ben saw his friend's face turning a delicate shade of violet and decided it was time to leave... Millinocket, Maine---------------------------------------NINE "Home, home again. I like to be here when I can." --Pink Floyd The Daytona from Hell was unseen for the next couple of weeks. Around the seventeenth of October Zoner cornered ReRob. "ReRob, I don't mean to rush you. But where is my car?!" "Um, well, I haven't quite finished with it yet." "ReRob, I have to go home in two days. My finals are stressing the hell out of me, and you tell me I won't have a car?!" "Relax, I've got an angle." "You've got an angle? Like what. I need my car. What am I going to tell my parents? I didn't want to drive home so I took the bus? I'm sure they'll buy that. I love my car, I love to drive, and they KNOW that. I'm boned....." "Just take it easy, I've got an angle." "What angle?" Zoner screamed. "Itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy." "What the hell are you doing with that? Never mind, I don't want to know. I just want my car back by Saturday." With that Zoner just walked away. ReRob just shrugged and headed back to the HDS. FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER 1991 Ben was sitting in Wedge Booth #1 with his stuff all around him, ensconced in a little fortress of trunk, duffel bag, and laundry basket. He was, as usual, reading something. "'Lo, Ben," said Yuri as she entered the Wedge. "Where's Kei?" "Dunno...she went that way. Probably taking up one of the Wedgeterms for a frivolous purpose again...I'm just waiting for Mom to show up..." The airlock swung open and Ben's mother entered. Ben waved, which she returned as she came over. "Hi, Ben--ready to go?" "Just about...hey, can a couple of people help me with this stuff?" "Sure," said Yuri. She picked up the trunk and hauled it unconcernedly out to the curb. "I hate it when they do that," said Ben, shouldering his duffel bag. "Who is that?" "Oh, that's Yuri." "Who's Yuri?" "She is." "Stop that!" "Sorry...she's a student. A Wedge Rat." "What's her major?" "MegaZone." "What?" "CS." "Could she help you with your Pascal?" "Yeah, if I felt like living dangerously." "Why, is she dangerous?" "You might say that." They finally reached the curb by this point. "Thanks, Yuri." "No problem...have a nice break." "Thanks, you too." "She's nice," Ben's mother commented as he stuffed his duffel bag into the back of the Camaro. "Do you know her well?" "Mmm..." said Ben, wobbling a hand. "Oh really?" "Mother, don't start with that." "Well, I just want to know..." "Don't. Start. That." "Okay, fine! Ready?" "In a second...there's one more thing I have to get. Be right back," he announced, and ran back into the Wedge. Just as he thought, Kei was indeed on a WedgeTerm MUDding. "Come on, my mother's waiting." "Just a minute, let me kill this thing." "*sigh* Come on, will you? My mother's not the most patient person in the world." "I see it's genetic." "Oh, shut up." Fully ten minutes later, Kei finally got to a point where she was willing to save her character and log out. In that time she slaughtered various critters and things, including Schletz. "Have a nice break," pfloyd called from deep within a Wedge booth. "You too," Ben replied. "Like he has to worry about it," Kei whispered, nudging him. "HMMmmm," Ben replied. Ben's mother, waiting impatiently by the car, looked up, about to say something to him, and stopped, just kind of...looking... "You want the front?" "Sure." "Ok...don't let Mom intimidate you...Mom, this is Kei. Kei --this is my mom Anne." "Hi," said Ben's mom. She grabbed her son by the sleeve, dragged him closer, and whispered, "Who is this?" "I told you," Ben replied, pulling himself away. "This is Kei. She's coming home with us." "", replied Anne, speechless. "Oh, don't look so shocked," Ben replied. "She's got nowhere else to go, I couldn't possibly be so mean as to leave her here in this pit over break. Unlike some people I know." The sarcasm was of course lost, as its recipient was some several dozen yards away watching TV. Ben's mother gave him a very strange look. "I hope you don't mind, Mrs. Hutchins," Kei said in a letter-perfect #141-A (Sweet and Innocent). "It really does get awfully boring here during breaks." "Does your father know about this?" Ben's mother asked him suddenly. "No," Ben replied openly. "He hasn't the faintest idea." "I don't know what he's going to say..." "Probably something like `baaah?'," Ben said with a grin, folding up the front seat long enough to compact himself into the back. "I can deal." "Are you sure it's no problem?" "Not for me, I guess..." Shaking her head, Ben's mother got into the car and shut her door. Kei settled into the passenger seat and away they went. "Hey, a stick shift. You drive stick shift?" she asked, noting the shifter. "Only when forced," Anne replied. "Oh." And thus the conversation went...all the way to the Galactic Center of Nothingness, Millinocket, Maine. Can you say, "awkward"? Sure you can. I bet you can even spell it. Ben dumped his duffel bag on the porch and fumbled for the keys; he managed to get the proper one into the door and open it up. "This is it," he said, spreading his arms wide. "My house." At about that point, the dog noticed people and went berserk. Not dangerously berserk...more of a "Oh, wow, people!" kind of berserk. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, down, muttley, down!" Ben shouted playfully, fending off the retriever. "Hey, a dog! What's his name?" "Randy." "Hi, Randy," Kei greeted the animal, vigorously patting his head. "Can he drive?" "No..." "Play Trivial Pursuit?" "No..." "Operate starship weaponry?" "No...mostly, he sleeps and eats." "Great. We'll get along fine then." Randy proceeded to submit (grudgingly [yeah, right]) to having his head scratched for a very long time. (It takes a biiig lot of convincing to get him to do that, let me tell you.) "Dad must not be home yet," said Ben as he executed Standard I'm Home Maneuver #33--Open The Refrigerator. "You want something?" When Peter arrived home, he discovered his son sitting on the couch, drinking a soda and watching Late Night with David Letterman. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was the young lady sitting next to him on the sofa, scratching behind the ears of a very contented-looking Golden Retriever and taking in the incredibly silly show as well. "Hey, Ben," said Peter. "How was your trip?" "Fine...yours?" "Fine...can I talk to you in the kitchen?" "I suppose you could, but that would mean I'd have to get up...as you can see, I'm somewhat comfortable...is it really important?" "Yeah, I would say so." "Okay, I guess." Ben heaved the sigh of one who has been called away from a perfectly comfortable couch for no good reason and got to his feet. They went into the kitchen. "Who is that?" Peter asked as soon as they were around the corner. "Oh, how rude of me." Ben went back to the living room and said, "Dad, this is Kei. Kei, this is my father Peter. I invited Kei to come up and spend the week--Worcester during break is even more boring than Millinocket and she had noplace else to go. Hope you don't mind." "Hi," said Peter. "So, are you a student at WPI too?" "You could say that," Kei replied. "I hope you don't mind this--Ben said it would be okay." "No, no, I don't mind. I'll go upstairs and put the guest room together..." "Oh, you don't need to--" Kei began, but a semi-gentle elbow from Ben cut her off. "Hmm?" "I mean, that's all right, I can take care of it myself." "Oh, no, that's no problem. Well, it's been a long day...good night...and Ben, turn down the heater before you come upstairs, you hear me?" "Yep. 'Night." "Good night. Good to have you home, son. And it was nice meeting you, Kei." "You too," said Kei. Confused beyond repair, Peter went upstairs and went to bed. He'd figure it out later. "Why'd you poke me?" Kei demanded. "My father's a cool guy, Kei, but I don't want him to know about certain parts of my life...you know?" "No, I don't--ohhh..." she said, a knowing smile slowly obliterating her earlier look of puzzlement. "I get it. Not a word out of me," she assured him with a wink. "Thanks. I don't know how he'd react..." "Don't worry about it then." She leaned closer and suddenly, with a lightning motion, seized the remote control. A massive battle began for control of the remote, which ended with the two of them on the floor, laughing madly but trying to stay quiet for Peter's sake, grappling for the remote, entangled, and looking up at Mike... Term Break Blues------------------------------------------TEN "I ain't ever gonna let you down. All you gotta do is trust me." --Tom Petty SATURDAY 19 OCTOBER 1991 Zoner slept in late Saturday morning; he had taken his last final Friday afternoon and afterward he and Yuri had relaxed by consuming a few Southern Comfort and Cokes in Ellsworth 7 and watching Rock 'n Rule. ReRob hadn't been seen in quite some time, but Zoner decided not to worry about it. If his car wasn't there Saturday morning he would just have to kill ReRob and face up to his parents. Zoner and Yuri finally woke up around noon, and after kissing their good mornings Zoner went out into the environment that was E7. He found ReRob vegging on the couch watching his Def Leppard Live - In the Round, In Your Face video, which he also had piped through the stereo. "Gweepings," ReRob greeted Zoner. "Gweepings. You know what day today is, don't you?" "I'm pretty sure it's Saturday. Why?" "It's the day I go home, remember?" "Yes." "Well?" "Well what?" "Where's my car?!" "Out back in the parking lot." "Really?" "Really." "My car?" "Well, not quite. You may notice some differences. I created it with clucomp using data I got down at Harr Dodge. It's as close as I could get it. It's sort of a blend of an '89 and '90 Daytona ES, with a bit of DeLorean and some British-AnimeTech Turbo 7000 thrown in for fun. I did use the engine, drive train and tires from your car. You won't be needing them anyway." "That's cool...wait a minute, what did you mean, `You won't be needing them anyway'? And what the hell is an British-AnimeTech Turbo 7000? Isn't British-AnimeTech that fake company Ben made up for his Marvel campaign? The one the Griffin runs?" "Never mind that now. It's a surprise. I haven't quite finished yet, but I'm sure you'll like it." "Whatever, as long as the car out in the parking lot can fool my parents. I'm going upstairs to shower. Later." "Later." After a refreshing shower, Zoner checked in on Yuri. "G'morning love, howsit with you?" Zoner asked. "Ok. You're leaving today, aren't you?" "Yeah, I've got to go home and work for a week. Make some honest money. Help to pay the bills." "I'll miss you. Why can't I go with you?" "Yuri, we've already been over this. My parents are cool, but I'm not sure they could deal with me bringing a woman home to live with them for a week. Even if they could handle it, I don't know if the rest of my family could. It's just a little bit awkward, especially if I have to explain where you came from. That would be nearly impossible. I'm still trying to get a grip on that." "Still, you're going to be gone for an entire week. What am I supposed to do?" "I don't know. Watch my entire videotape collection? Read some of my books? Here, this one's good, Combat Guns, I'm sure it will interest you. Or how about the Epic of Flight series? Or any of the others I've got here. How about the Illuminatus! Trilogy, or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Maybe Red Storm Rising, I've got a bunch of good books. Listen to music. Roger Waters, The Wall, Live in Berlin. AC/DC. Go ask ReRob for some of his weird music if you want, or listen to pfloyd's entire collection of ZZ Top and Pink Floyd when he's here this weekend. You know my password, log in...read news, post to rec.arts.anime, I'm sure they'd think that was cool...I'm sure you'll find something to do. But whatever you do, don't drive anything!" "That's not fair! What happened with your car wasn't my fault! I didn't mean to - mmppphhh...." Zoner silenced her protestations with a kiss. "I know, I'm over it now. I just couldn't resist. Tell you what, I'll call you up a couple of times. I'd have you call me, but my parents tend to sack out early, they don't keep college hours. Well, I'd better get going." He began to pack up his laundry and some of his junk from around the apartment which he wanted to take home. Once finished he went back upstairs to say his goodbyes to Yuri. <> Zoner sat down on the bed next to Yuri and wrapped his arm around her. "Well, I'm packed, guess it's time to leave." "Guess so," Yuri replied morosely. "Don't be so glum. It's only for a week. I'll be back, I don't want to go, but I should see my family, you know. And I want to finish off my flight lessons. Maybe I'll take you up some time," Zoner said, followed by a mumbled, "Not." He grinned and finished with, "Besides, it is money..." "Yeah, you're right. I guess I'll cope." Zoner chuckled. "What was so funny?" Yuri inquired. "You, you're starting to use slang more often. For a while I thought you were going to speak normally forever, I'm glad to see you're picking up the lingo." "Lingo?" "Slang terms, you know, like cope, gweep, and the others you've started using." "Oh. I haven't really noticed." "Well, I have, it's one of those things that makes you so loveable. It's one of the little things an SO notices." "Like how you use the 'I love you' sign to say hello?" "Well, yeah, I guess I never really think about it, I started doing that years ago." "I think it's cute." "I think you're cute." "Really," Yuri intoned slyly, and followed up with a kiss. "Really," Zoner replied gently after the kiss, and kissed her again. "I thought you were leaving," Yuri said with a grin. "I'm not in any hurry," Zoner whispered, pulling her down. The Beginning of the End-------------------------------ELEVEN "Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future." --Steve Miller TUESDAY 24 DECEMBER 1991 A couple of months passed without a tremendous amount of strangeness. John Coyle hadn't been heard of since the Wedgewar, missing corpse or not. They had seen no Boomers, no attack choppers, no hideous monsters. The Wedge was safe, Ben had passed Scheme and Calc 2, the subtitled release of Flight 005 was out, and everything was going along just plain incredibly well. As far as Kei and Yuri went, well...thanks to a little, no, make that a lot of judicious hacking, the WPI academic computers now recognized "Kei Morgan" and "Yuri Daniels" as registered students of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The fact that they were taking no classes was quite beside the point. Of course, being registered as students meant they could now have their own accounts on the local computer system. Kei was now deadshot@wpi.wpi.edu and Yuri was hazard@wpi.wpi.edu, a little joke between Zoner and herself. It had reached the point even where people in the Wedge never noticed them anymore. The Dirty Pair were as much a part of Wedge life as being asked not to lean on the window. They even had Gamma Delta Iota shirts and were now full members of that sister sorority to Rho Alpha Tau. Of course, Ben couldn't resist teaching Kei everything he knew about the computer systems; she had thus been inducted in early November as GGF-1, Meta Chi, Member G.L.O.G., Disruptive Influence, Enemy of the State, et al. Of course, during this time the Zone was teaching Yuri as much as he could about the local systems and the networks. Naturally, Yuri, being incredibly competent with computers, quickly became more skilled than her teacher, although the lack of cyberlink capability frustrated her somewhat. However, Zoner still was the better driver, as the drive to Ten Minute Walk had demonstrated. Since they had no classes both of the pair spent a good deal of time each day playing around on the system. Kei MUDded a great deal, quickly putting Guyblood to shame and nuking him a couple of times, just to prove a point. Ben, being ardently anti-MUD, found this incredibly depressing. Yuri spent most of her time hacking on the Internet, trying to get into NORAD. She had a great deal of interest in the military technology of her new reality. (She was in for a disappointment.) One big change was in the Daytona from Hell. After Zoner returned from break, ReRob offered to finish his repair job on the Daytona from Hell and no one had seen it for a couple of weeks. He apparently had used machines supplied by itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy, lifted from Back to the Future using the video input capability of the DECstation, as well as some stuff he got from consulting with Ben and formatting some ftp'd text from the latter's hard drive. In other words, it was now the Flying Daytona from Hell, which suited Zoner just fine, as he had finally gotten his private pilot rating after being in training on and off for over four years. Of course, the Daytona wasn't an FAA approved craft. That was no problem; Rob had also incorporated Minovski technology from Mobile Suit Gundam which made the Daytona undetectable on radar. The Wedge was not what it had been, either; Zoner's earlier comment about resonating the DAKA sludge into a feasible, Protoculture-style power source had actually panned out. Something in the wreckage was generating the precise resonance rate needed to harness the mess as a power source of incredible potential. (wub wub wub) The Wedge Rats wasted no time in laying in lines and control systems; with that as a power supply, the somehow repaired shield generator would finally function at peak efficiency, freed of its dependence on the Worcester power grid. Zoner normally went home for winter break, but since he had lost his regular job he found one working as a sales clerk at the Auburn Mall, so he stayed in the area. Besides, it would be hard to explain Yuri to his parents. He did visit his family a couple of times; luckily, he could fly over the drifts which had kept the Worcester area snowed in for the season. Weird weather, that. Of course he couldn't go home for Christmas, and his birthday which was the day after, as Christmas Eve and the day after were busy days at the mall. Ben sat in the Wedge booth of his choice, feet up, Drano in hand, Kei tucked under an arm as he was tucked under one of hers, mulling over the latest issue of Guitar World and generally reflecting on how overpoweringly cool life was. He was also marveling at how the snowdrifts were covering the street outside. Drive home for Christmas in this? Yeah, right. He had gotten a ride from Zoner once or twice to see his folks, but as far as spending any time went, there was no way it could be done. It was a Wedgeish Christmas this year. And that suited him just fine. <> A figure cloaked in black stood, his arms folded, and watched the assembly line roll in the (sub^5)basement of Alden Hall. At one end, the stasis-preserved corpses of the victims of the Wedgewar were fed in, one after another; at the other, they emerged, revitalized, superpowerful. The figure would have smiled, if it had a face; unfortunately it didn't, so it contented itself with a small nod of satisfaction, turned and swept out of the room. "My army is nearly complete," the cloaked figure declared in a synthetic voice as he entered the next room, arms folded. "We will attack tomorrow. How are your duties progressing?" At the DECstation, Larry Foard turned in his chair and replied, "All is in readiness...on your command, I will... terminate them." "Not yet. Timing is everything. First I must make the other two...suffer." The cloaked figure pivoted and stomped out of the room. And left alone in the small chamber with the DECstation, Entropy shivered involuntarily before returning to his work. If split-second timing was involved and he had a day to work, he could alias the procedure... Merry Christmas----------------------------------------TWELVE "It's been so long since I found out. What people mean by down and out." --Led Zeppelin WEDNESDAY 25 DECEMBER 1991 (CHRISTMAS DAY) Meanwhile, in his ongoing research with itsnotmygoddamn- planetunderstandmonkeyboy, ReRob had discovered some interesting things about CLULESS. One was that he might be nigh-oblivious, but was still too clueful to make heads or tails out of its programming language. Therefore, his interest was from a compiler's standpoint. He had discovered what the -i flag did; generated inanimate matter. With that command, he had created the Cyclone; without -i it refused to compile, declaring "inanimate subject--compile failure". And therein, he realized, lay the bug in CLULESS that allowed for the creation of life. Compiling without -i. Also, he discovered that the default clucomp command was actually a shell script going deeper into subdirs to generate output that default-redirected to /dev/reality, a quasi- realistic state of matter, convincing, but not real. With a start, he realized something; if someone with more knowledge of UNIX code than he could hack a code to shut down /dev/reality, anything redirected there, invulnerable to kill -9 and so on, would go pif. Or more likely slowly deresolve as the device shut down. /dev/reality was an undue load on the Encore, to be sure, as there was a better way to do things; clucomp -i -x altered the default command from redirected /dev/reality to xhosted real_world. xhost real_world was the way to make things permanent--/dev/reality was the metaphysical equivalent of /tmp. It was just a matter of time before it got erased.... A sudden bad feeling struck him; he exited CLULESS and ran a Super Who. He noted Entropy's presence on the network, from "other" as usual; other than that, only he and some nonames were on. So why did the cold lump of dread stick in his gut? He ran a regular who and came up with something that widened his eyes: entropy@overthruster.wpi.edu "Overthruster?" he murmured. He ran a what and discovered an emacs job, a telnet--a telnet? ReRob ran a trace on it, running with a hunch and a growing feeling of doom. Overthruster was telnetted to /dev/reality. He was running code across the device, in the background; the beginning of an alias code. Soon, if ReRob read it right, a single keystroke would shut down /dev/reality and that would be that. Anything redirected there from the HDS31000 would be terminated. Anything. Irreplaceably. He ran some other checks. Under his very nose, CLULESS had been changed. Altered to default to -i without the flag. Gryphon had the copy in his account, still, but it was putting him over the temporary research quota granted by a verbose-mode aej. Soon his account would lock up. A final sliver of ice drove into ReRob's heart as he ran a check on /usr6/pub/anime and came up with /usr6/pub/anime: No such file or directory. He ran out of the station and pounded up the stairs, slapping on sections of CVR-3 as he ran, running with all his might to get to his Cyclone, race back to the Wedge and warn Ben--as the owner of the processes, he could redirect them from /dev/reality to real_world, but it would take precious time, and he didn't know how long he had before Entropy finished the job. He'd figure out why Entropy was doing it later on--perhaps someone using his account, he's gone insane, don't think about it, just drive-- Below Alden Hall, the cloaked figure entered Entropy's office. "Is everything ready?" he asked. "It is," Entropy replied. "One keystroke and /dev/reality is history." "Good. Execute." As Entropy hit Return, the figure crossed his arms and a low chuckle rolled from his speaker grid. In another room, above them, Largo leaned back from his security viewscreen, smiled, and said, "This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of the Dirty Pair and before long, it will see the end of the Wedge Rats." The figure heard him in an earphone, turned, then turned back, looking at the screen for a moment. /dev/reality: Device terminated. All jobs killed. Have a nice day. "Merry Christmas..." he whispered, then whirled and stalked out. "Yeah, you too," Entropy mumbled absently as he gweeped. Back in the Wedge, Ben and Kei were sitting around, talking about this and that and nothing in particular, as they were wont to do. A partially read copy of the Illuminatus! Trilogy lay on the table along with the hardcopy of some bit of Scheme code Ben was working on; a pencil was in his hand as he went over the code with his forebrain and chatted with the back of his mind. Suddenly, Kei stopped talking. Right in mid-sentence, as if someone had flipped a switch. He turned to look at her-- Someone drove a shaft of frozen CO2 through his heart. She was frozen, standing bolt upright in the booth, a look of shock on her face. And she was flickering. She was grainy, the colors of her skin, her hair, everything just a bit wrong...she looked like a .gif image that was stripped four or five bits and crammed into a window that was too small. With a thrill of horror Ben remembered where she came from in the first place... "I think you'd better get away," she whispered, her voice scratchy and fading. "I can't move for some reason." A white rectangle appeared in the air above her, glowing and sparking. Then it began to drop down. "No!" he screamed, throwing a shoulder against hers, trying to push her from under the descending square of light. He passed right through her, feeling only a slight tickling, like static electricity or the psychological tickle you get from knowing you're being exposed to radio waves or the like, and smashed his face violently into the corner of the Wedge booth. Heedless of the blood running from his nose, he turned around, stood up on the seat, braced his palms against the square, and pushed with all the strength he could muster. It was hot, incredibly hot; it seared the skin on his hands as he fought to stop its inexorable descent. It was to no avail; he cursed and screamed and pounded his fists against what he recognized as a deresolution gate, reaching the point where it was almost burning his face. There was a sudden white-hot flare of light and he screamed again as a thousand- volt triphammer slammed across his brain. Consciousness left him; when he awoke he was lying in a heap against the nearest support post. He pulled himself to his feet to see a sight that would haunt him for a long time. The accretion square had destroyed Kei. There was nothing left of her but a burned square on the carpet of the Wedge. It hadn't been long, only a few seconds; smoke was still rising from his hands and the carpet, and there was a faint tingle of electricity in the air. The agony in his charred hands was nothing compared to the agony in his soul. He dropped to his knees; his jaw swung open of its own accord and a howl of the blackest torment poured from his throat. [[ [ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [ [ [[[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[[ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[[ [ [ ReRob heard the scream from halfway across the snow- covered Quad and knew he was too late. He roared up to the airlock and dismounted, running through into the Wedge to find Ben crumpled on the Wedge floor, screaming and raging and sobbing, tearing at the carpet with hands seared into claws, stark raving slavering mad. ReRob just felt lucky he had xhosted his Cyclone to real_world...if the derez grid had done that to his hands, what would've happened to ReRob when his CVR-3 had derezzed...? With an incredible THRAM!, something smashed into the roof of the Wedge. The roof hatch opened and down dropped Zoner, his flightsuit's gloves burned almost through. He was much more lucid; his was a cold rage. His eyes burned with an arctic fire that almost frightened ReRob. His hands were clenched into fists so tight the knuckles of his gloves had split. A single tear was about halfway down his cheek. "Who did it?" MegaZone demanded. "I'm going to find out who it was and I'm going to kill them with MY OWN HANDS!" Ben whirled around, grabbed a Wedge trash barrel, and prepared to give it a good hard heave through the windows into the Lower Wedge. He didn't feel the hands on his forearms, gripping so hard they bruised; he just noticed that he dropped the barrel. Snarling, he twisted free of Zoner's grip and slammed a fist into the support beam. The shock of white-hot pain ripping through his fist into his brain blasted him back to reality. The steady stream of incoherences from his throat ceased; for a moment he was silent, standing by the post, his hand hanging limply at the end of an outstretched arm; then he let out a long, low moan, settled to his knees, and buried his face in his hands, sobbing. Water dripped freely from between his fingers, the salt adding to the seared fury of the pain in his hands, to which the dull throb of his crushed knuckles was little but an undertone. "Ben," Zoner said firmly. Ben ignored him, or perhaps couldn't hear him. "Ben!" MegaZone grabbed his friend by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. "Look at me!" "Leave me alone!" Ben screamed, slamming his palms into Zoner's chest and breaking free to stumble backward. "Just go away." He turned away and started to leave the Wedge. "No, I won't leave you the fuck alone! You're not quitting now, we have to find out who did this and kill them. Slowly..." Zoner said with an evil grin as he and ReRob cut Ben off by the mailboxes. "Ben, come on, snap out of this!" ReRob implored. "We've got to get back to itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstand- monkeyboy and get moving. Are you going to let this go unpunished? Do you think this is what Kei would want?" "No!" Ben said, as though the word were burning his tongue. "Never." "Then come on, pull yourself out of this. Much as I can do, I'm not the primary operator of itsnotmygodddamnpplanet- understandmonkeyboy, you are. You're super-user on the system there, not me. Now come on, we need you. Revenge is something that can't be rushed." "Okay...okay. Let me go up to my room. There are a few things I have to get..." "Me too," Zoner said. "I have to go over to E7 and get my magtape." Ben returned fourteen minutes later, his face wet with fresh tears. "My room," he said in a small, hollow voice. "They trashed my room...destroyed all the .gifs, the photos of us, everything I had..." His fists, bandaged and burn- salved, clenched and his face became hard and cold. "They didn't get this, though," he said, holding up a sheaf of printouts and a couple of photocopies. Zoner came into the Wedge, a fistful of melted plastic in his hand. "They fried everything! The bastards got it all, both magtapes, the entire FTP site, all of the .gifs and printouts. Even my comics. They need to die. Badly," he seethed. "Him too," ReRob said, indicating Ben. "Come on...let's go make them pay." They raced to Fuller, ReRob on his Cyclone and Zoner and Ben in the Flying Daytona from Hell, and immediately sealed themselves into the HDS31000. The first thing Ben did after logging in was sever the connection the station had with real_world. Suddenly, on Entropy's screen, itsnotmygoddamnpplanet- understandmonkeyboy vanished. Just went *ting* and disappeared. As if it had dropped off the face of existence. He scratched his head, ran a few tests, and then shrugged, returning to making Largo lots of money with which to conquer the world. That job was over with. CLULESS was sealed off, the .gifs and scripts destroyed, and the original jobs vaped...there was no chance of them coming back anytime soon. Who had it hurt, anyway...those two were unlikely to have any friends with their rep, right? Securely isolated from all that was real, Ben hunched over his xtty keyboard and began pounding away at an emacs job. An inspiration had struck and he worked with the speed and accuracy of a madman on a mission. "What are you doing?" ReRob asked. "Rewriting them," he replied, not slackening his pace. "By hand?! You don't even know how to program in CLULESS. You're insane." "Uh huh," Ben replied. He paused his typing long enough to point to the sheaf of printout and paper beside the one he was referring to. "Can you do me a favor and CAD that in between Cyclones?" "What is it?" "Everything I have on the GRF-3N Griffin III Armored Combat Suit. Stats, designs, projections, action shots, battle reports, everything. I don't plan on taking them out with anything but." "Ben," said Zoner, his grip on lucidity returning faster than Ben's, "we don't even know who they are." "Yes we do," ReRob said. "Who?" "Hard as this may be to believe, the guy who vaped /dev/reality was Entropy." "WHAT?" "No, see, I think there's something seriously wrong here. I mean, obviously, someone had to rez up Genom, Boomers, etc. And it certainly wasn't one of us. Was it?" He received two of the most searingly sarcastic `100% NutraSweet' looks of his life. "YCDN," said Ben, and turned back to his manic typing. "No, look, there's a point in there somewhere, and never mind the way I comb my hair. Entropy was probably fooling around one day, stumbled across CLULESS the way you did, and then oop! There was Genom. Now then. Genom has a lot of money. Entropy is not morally opposed to money. Genom has ambitions of world domination. Entropy has a lot of computer ability. I see a connection there." "Go on," Zoner said, his interest piqued. Ben, on the other hand, could not have ignored him harder. "Genom looks for world domination. They hire Entropy. They see the Wedge Rats as a block in their path; we're the only others with this technology. I hope. And ours is better than theirs--we have an HDS. They use Boomers, et al., to try and take us down--it doesn't work. My guess is, they decided to try something else. Now what better way to defeat the Wedge Rats than to destroy our two finest combatants--and, not quite incidentally, our morale?" Ben slammed the Return key, turned around, glared, and turned back around. "I'm detecting strong hate waves here," MegaZone said. "Why do you think I'm still wearing the CVR?" "So basically, we have to go head-to-head with Genom Corporation? Um, even the Knight Sabers have problems. This isn't going to be easy." "No, it won't," ReRob agreed. "But here's the good news. Our technology is better. You saw what I did to one of those choppers with a single minimissile, right? Now I've got the CVR and the 52 Battler here. If we have to, we can outfit the entire fraggin' Wedge with VR-052 Battler Cyclones." MegaZone was silent as he considered the implications of that statement. He pictured an army of Wedge Rats in CVR-3 and Battler Cyclones and shuddered. He pictured honor, glory, and death. He smiled. "Of course," said ReRob, "we're not going to give one to Schletz. Are we?" "No, I don't think that would be a terribly good idea." "Still...I don't think VR-052s are going to be enough. We need more diversity here. Ben's got me working on the Griffin...that's gonna take me a year and a half, basically. Ben whirled. "Like I'm not working just as hard!" he shouted, then turned back and resumed typing. "Well, while he's working on artificial life, I'll be working on something much simpler--weapons. Hopefully I'll be able to pump out a whole bunch more of them." "I'm not working on an army," Ben murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "Meanwhile. I should be able to modify the 052 enough to make the 38 Light and the 41 Sabre. And the thing from MZ23. About the only thing I have to wait on--oh, shit. There're three of us trapped in this station, we're all guys--there's no way in hell I'm gonna be able to template CVR-she." "I'm sure the Wedge women would gladly help you out. And I think I'll talk to daver about obtaining some surplus weaponry. Lots of surplus weaponry..." Zoner said with his patented smirk. "This is gonna work," Ben muttered. Despair and Triumph----------------------------------THIRTEEN "It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever--that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never to be heard." --Frankenstein Over the next five days, the statement "This is gonna work" became a litany for Ben. He slept little, and ate less, as he pounded away at the keyboard for hour after hour, pausing only to nap when it was absolutely necessary, eat when he was forced, shower, change clothes, and tend his hands. In the meantime, ReRob worked almost as intensely on the mecha units and Zoner shuttled back and forth giving technical advice. Itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy was only xhosted to real_world for the shortest possible amounts of time; to email out for food (and get it back by email), to email all the Wedge Rats for emergency notices, and to admit Wedge Rats for fittings. Ben's corner of the station was untouched, strewn about with scribble paper and the like as he wrestled with the protocols of CLULESS, the problem being that as he gained a clue to how it worked, it became harder to program in. The whole thing hinged on his objectivity, which was hard to maintain considering the circumstances. Meanwhile, in ReRob's section, Wedge Rats came and went, being issued the Cyclone of their choice and exiting with it packed into a large cardboard box. Quietly, almost silently, the Wedge was gearing up for war. After seven days of intensive programming, Ben suddenly stopped typing and, with a final C-x C-c, shut down the emacs window. He read his mail (alarmed notices from aej about being 42 meg over quota, mostly), even read some news, trying to calm himself before the big moment. Then he cd'd to /usr-1 and prepared to compile. Suddenly, a warning message came in. Someone was trying to hose his terminal. Shut him down, log in through that port to his account, and erase everything he had worked for. "Nrrr!" he snarled, and began banging out a countercode. In Alden, Entropy met resistance and began to push ahead. Whoever was resisting him, he was decent, but Entropy's skill far outclassed his. He was fast and lucky, that was all. "What is taking so long?" Largo demanded behind him. "Shut up, I'm working." "Work faster, fool! I'm paying you well to do this job!" <> For twenty minutes they battled back and forth; finally, seeing he could hold out no longer, Ben prepared to try a desperate, last ditch attempt. He while(1) fork'ed Entropy's terminal and keyed a compile command. "Wait right there," said ReRob from across the station. "I forgot to tell you--clucomp's animate enabler has been killed. Use the copy in your account." "Thanks," Ben replied quietly; it was the first word he'd said in almost a week. He returned to his homedir, enabled the compiler, and engaged. Segmentation fault (core dumped) Two large anvils materialized on the ceiling and crashed to the floor of the HoloDECstation, one on either side of Ben's seat. All the color (what was left of it) drained out of Ben's face. He grabbed his shoulders in the opposite hands and began to rock slowly back and forth, chanting over and over again, "No, no, no, no, no..." Zoner stared at the xterm and drummed his fist against his leg. Ben clenched his fists and slammed them down on the xtty, smashing its virtual face and deresolving it. "No, no, no, no, NO!" He whirled, threw himself out of the chair to the floor, an entire week of warring hope and despair transmuted to pure despair. "No..." MegaZone walked slowly into a corner, collapsed into a heap, put on a Walkman, and began listening to NineInchNails' "Terrible Lie". Ben pulled himself into an Indian-style position and, rocking gently, began to sing. <> This flower's scorched this film is on On a maddening loop These clothes These clothes don't fit us right I'm to blame It's all the same it's all the same You come to me with the phone in your hand You come to me with your hair curled tight You come to me with propositions You come to me with excuses Dumped out in the road You wear me out you wear me out We've been through faith breakdowns self-hurt plastics collections self-help self-pain asked psychics Fuck off I was central I had control I lost my head I need this I need this A paperweight, a junk garage Winter rain, a honey pot Crazy, all the lovers have been tapped Hotline, wanted ad Crazy what you could've had It's crazy what you could've had Crazy what you could've had I need this I I I need this While he sang softly to himself, drowning in his grief, and Zoner did much the same thing with his Walkman on 10 and his hands pressing the headphones to his ears, ReRob went over to the window and examined it carefully, hoping for something, anything, that might help. And, his eyes widening, he saw it. He turned to get Ben's attention--then thought better of it; having such a trivial error (missed paren) pointed out to him in this state might evoke a rather harsh reaction. Instead, he corrected it, ran over the file, and, his fingers crossed, compiled it. Then he pulled off a quick file transfer and logged out. Ben finished the last, wavering note of his song, pressing his clenched fists to his eyes; he could taste the salt as the water ran from his face, wetting his shirt. He didn't care. He didn't particularly care about anything anymore. He just wanted to revenge himself on the people who had done this to him--and then die. A hand touched him gently on the shoulder. He slapped it away with a snarl of rage. The last thing he wanted now was to be comforted. Strong hands grabbed his own fists, drawing them gently away from his eyes; he tried to twist free, but the grip was firm--but soft somehow...the hands were too small and smooth to belong to ReRob or Zoner-- <> He opened his eyes, slowly, hesitantly, not wanting to dare to hope to believe. Tears ran free as his lids slipped open, splashing onto his saturated shirt. His vision cleared as the liquid slid away from his eyeballs and a face snapped into nearly clear focus. Kei's. Ben wondered if he was insane or just dreaming. She was wearing her jeans, sneakers, and her Operation Zenith t- shirt; he had brought them with him from his room the last time he emailed himself to Morgan to get a shower, in a gesture of hope that she would appear. He suddenly realized that he was wearing that shirt today too. "Kei?" he said weakly. "'Zat you?" "It sure is," she replied. Then she released his hands and grabbed him up in a hug. "My God," Ben whispered to himself as he hugged her with all his strength, clinging desperately, not willing to believe but never wanting to disbelieve. He needed an anchor, something to keep him moored in the world. "Kei, you're alive!" Something snapped in him; a week of rage, frustration, hope, and despair all came gushing out of him in a tremendous storm of relief. "Goddamnit--you're alive!" He began laughing hysterically and crying at the same time, dancing, punching at the air in joy, thumping the walls, degaussing the HoloDECstation, thanking ReRob over and over and over again, kissing Kei, getting kissed by Kei, exulting, cheering, rejoicing, and thus and so on. Ben calmed a bit when he realized that their fierce embrace was 1) making the muscles in his arms twitch with fatigue and 2) bruising him; he held her at arms' length by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes, his own shoulders heaving as he tried to get his breathing under control so he could talk. "Kei, there's something I want you to know...I had my initial misgivings, I was indecisive, I was scared...I thought I'd never see you again. This is weird, it never occurred to me that this could happen to me...I never thought.." "Right before it all went dark I saw your face," she told him at the same time. The conversation connected about as well as the NFS server tends to, but neither particularly cared for continuity at the moment. "The pain there--I was actually more afraid for you than me. I've never felt that way before...it's kind of unsettling." Almost simultaneously, they closed their eyes, took deep breaths, and pulled each other tight again, never mind the goddamn bruises, and both murmured the same phrase into the other's ear: "I love you." A few moments previously, Zoner had heard all the commotion through the music blasting through his Walkman. He tore off the headphones, throwing them to the floor, and turned around, about ready to explode in a violent rage. Then he saw Ben standing near his xtty keyboard, tears streaming unchecked down the side of his face Zoner could see, locked in a fierce embrace--with Kei! Zoner quickly scanned the environment of the HDS and locked onto a form he had never again expected to see, Yuri. She was standing off to one side, naked, and he hadn't had the foresight to bring clothes. He ran over to her and covered her in his denim jacket, well, as best he could, and hugged her for all he was worth. As he choked back tears of joy and relief he kissed her passionately and said, "You're back, I can't believe it. I missed you so much, I only felt this way about one other person. I, I love you Yuri. I want you to know that, I really love you." "I love you too, Zoner," Yuri sobbed. They stood there holding each other for a long moment. Then Zoner noticed that his jacket didn't really cover much, Yuri would need some clothes. He called up an Email window xhosted to real_world in E7C and grabbed some clothes she had left behind. A couple of minutes later, ReRob went to ask Ben about something in the Griffin armor; he discovered both Ben and Kei curled up in the corner under his xtty, fast asleep. ReRob marveled at the resilience of the human spirit and went back to work. He would just have to decide for himself which option Ben would prefer. Meanwhile, in Alden, Entropy received a piece of angry email from aej demanding to know why he too had over forty megabytes of stuff in his account. It's the last straw, the letter went, I've had enough of this shit, you can kiss your ass good-bye. And then pif! Entropy's account vanished into the ether. No password disability, no week's grace period-- just zap! and it was gone. Once and for all, aej had proven his superiority over the common user, no matter how skilled. Cursing, Entropy went out into the main room, slugged Largo, and stormed out of Alden Hall. It would take him hours to rebuild that account. The Second Wedge War---------------------------------FOURTEEN "I mean come on...how do you guys expect to beat me? --Good answer. Good answer!" --Raphael THE WEDGE WEDNESDAY 1 JANUARY 1992 The Wedge Rats were gathered in their home, overflowing the two principal Wedge booths and running off into the big one by DAKA Jr. as well. ReRob was explaining the events of the last couple of days. "What happened to Kei and Yuri?" Erik Swimm asked him. "Yeah," said Grendel, "I heard they got killed or something?" "To paraphrase Mark Twain," a rejuvenated, showered, well-rested and non-hungry Ben said as he rounded the corner from the nosh machines, "the reports of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated." "Isn't that the truth," Zoner added with a smirk as he followed. Kei and Yuri walked out into the Wedge, wearing matching suits of CVR-3F, or CVR-she. In extremely dark black. Not flat black or gloss black or matte black; more of a WOW that's black kind of black. Blacker than space itself. A color you could actually hear if you listened closely enough. Their helmets were tucked under their arms and their lasers slung in preferred positions, crossdraw for Kei, straightarm for Yuri. The only adornments the armor bore were the large red hearts on their shoulders where the unit flashes went. <> There was a general silence, the entire Wedge struck dumb by this development; then the room erupted in cheers. Several studying mundanes got up and left, whining about complaining to SNaP. After this reception, the meeting took on official form; ReRob was demonstrating the proper donning and removal of the CVR-3 body armor and Cyclone mecha unit; pfloyd, and Crocker were reviewing tactics. Ben, Kei, MegaZone, and Yuri were, erm, discussing some fine point of boffa combat (Ben's nose was bleeding, but it didn't particularly appear that he cared). ReRob finished his demonstration and, in due time, the meeting began to break up. Wedge Rats filtered around in different stages of armor, talking excitedly about the prospect of revenge on those who had pushed them this far. It had been established early on that they couldn't go on the offensive, for the simple reason that they didn't know where the enemy was. Entropy had been on from a wpi address, but that meant absolutely nothing. A net.god like Entropy could be anywhere, anytime he wanted. And for that matter, was there any guarantee that he would be based in the same place as the others of the enemy? Suddenly, the Wedge erupted into chaos. The windows along the Wedge booths exploded in flames, sending plexi shrapnel through the entire room. Wedge Rats screamed and scattered, slapping sections of CVR-3 on and locking helmet visors. ReRob darted behind the booth near DAKA Jr.; his Cyclone was there, folded up. Everyone else's was waiting outside, by the Quad. Ben dove for cover behind his machinegun mount. It was just about time to see if his armor was going to work; he couldn't deploy the gun in here anyway. Not enough time to turn it around. Boomers came through the holes where Lower Wedge windows had been, having sneak attacked via the Lower Wedge. Dirty trick; the Wedge Rats never thought about the Lower Wedge as an avenue of attack. Crocker boldly gave the order: "Retreeeeat! Plan 42!" As Wedge Rats scrambled to the Quad and their cycles, Pfloyd seconded the motion. "It's not a retreat, it's a strategic advance to the rear!" Kevin ran out, yelling "Shut up, Adam. Just shut up!" while slapping on the remainder of his CVR-3, and, not so incidentally, wrecking his manicure. "Shit! My nails!" ReRob ran by, to his specialized VR-065 Obliviator Cyclone. "Don't worry, Kevin. Your mecha's got better!" "By the way, ReRob, which one's..." He stopped in mid- sentence after exiting the airlock. Within the fleet of motorcycle mecha stood one glowing hot pink VR-041 Cyclone, the type with CADS sabres on each arm, which allow the wielder to cut aluminum like butter. "Never mind." Pfloyd didn't have any trouble finding his either; it was the flat black Sabre with the unit flash on the tank matching the one on his right shoulder; the circle, half red, half white, with the crossed hammers in it. Zoner ran to the fhuge motorcycle that was sitting at the end of a row. Ah, the Bahamode. He mounted up and revved the engine...such a sweet sound. He swung his hand around in an arc over his head and yelled, "Rev 'em up and let's kick some ass!" Gryphon just stood there and mentally called his GRF-3N Griffin III Armored Combat Suit. It appeared in outline around him, and he stood inside a live wire-frame drawing while the suit formed itself around him, from monochrome to CGA to VGA to Cray resolution and beyond. It was breathtaking, built in an exact likeness of a GRF-1N Griffin BattleMech save for the absent missile canister. Its entire surface was shimmering blue-silver metal, except the facebowl, which was impenetrably black. On the left shoulder plate was a 3WA symbol; on the right was a map of Maine with a large GoV superimposed on it. The left hand held a huge pistol-like weapon. Was the armor animated or real? He swung his arm around, targeted the nearest Boomer, and blew him away with his left-hand-held particle cannon; the Boomer did just that, with a satisfying explosion. Ok, it was definitely real. Ben was just kind of standing there, reveling in the tremendous rush that comes from having one of your favorite creations realized around you, when a Boomer charged at him wielding a laser sword. Without really thinking about it, Ben ducked, dodged to the side, and lashed out with a left that sheared the borg's head off and tossed it across the room. Ben grinned and fired his back jets, leaping outside to join his comrades as they raced around the "Quad track" toward the regroup point in front of the gym. The bikes raced around the Quad in a rather orderly fashion, which seemed strange for anarchistic Rats. After reaching the gym, they cut across the quad making a B-line for the Wedge, forming waves five bikes across. When each line of bikes hit the curb, they hit the jets, popped into the air, and proceeded to wrap the motorcycles around them. Strangely enough, these bikes were built to do just that. The first wave consisted of (from left to right) Pfloyd, Cheryl.Z, ReRob, Tim, and Ktefft. ReRob's 065 packed twin RLAMF-1 (Rotary Laser Array--Mondo Firepower Mk 1, or what the wise opponent does on seeing one) laser weapons, six- barreled laser Vindicators, which had the same effect at range as the CADS did in close. Pfloyd and Ktefft were wielding the CADS on their 041 Sabre Cyclones, and Tim was going absolutely apeshit about the agility of the 038-LT Combat Cyclone (after enduring several comments about crossdressing from Cheryl, who was also running a 38 Light). The left three Cyclones opened the windows with a quick barrage of mini-missiles, dubbed Search Warrant spells by a duly impressed Rob Crocker. Upon landing, the first wave's primary goal was opening a landing zone for the second through nth wave. Tim flattened opponents with rather exaggerated martial arts moves (after bouncing off the centerpost rather annoyingly). As if the laws of physics themselves wished to annoy him, he heard the impact of his blows a second or so after they landed. Kevin started working on the right side and Floyd on the left. He and Pfloyd performed what can best be described as military dissection on the 'bots, 'borgs, and other assorted nastinesses. ReRob cleared out the machines from where the 041 wearers reach ended to the back end of the Upper Wedge. Cheryl just generally wreaked havoc, a thing she had no small expertise in. The next second, the second wave came in, and the first one peeled off to the side. Ktefft jumped through the window they keep telling the Rats not to lean on and proceeded to mosh with everything in the Lower Wedge. (Moshing With Vibro-Swords. What A Concept. Have To Try It Sometime.) Within a minute, n waves of five Cyclones each (for a total of 5n Cyclones), plus a Griffin III and a Bahamode, held the center strip of the Upper Wedge. The group then proceeded to expand the strip until they ran out of Wedge. Those machines that weren't destroyed retreated to the Lower Wedge, and were subsequently pushed into Institute Road. Ktefft proceeded to shift back to bike and run about, slashing them off at the knees with his front-wheel CADS, cackling with glee. Zoner came barreling through the Wedge on his mondocycle and did much the same thing, making strafing run after strafing run with his front-mounted lasers. He was having too damn much fun to shift to mecha mode. ZRAK! A bolt of nifty-looking orange energy shot from someplace in the crowd of robots, cyborgs, and other assorted viciousnesses to blow the front wheel off Kevin's bike. This made it rather hard for him to do little things like steer and balance. He went skidding into a dumpster. Zoner slid to a halt, one leg down; his skill on a bike had improved greatly, thanks to lessons and practice with Yuri, Kei, and Ben. The crowd of mechanicals parted to allow one passage; everyone stopped fighting and looked at him. He was tall, powerfully constructed, cloaked in red with golden trim; his face was an amazingly silly-looking life-support mask. Made Darth Vader look like James Bond. "I am...Coyle," the mechanized figure intoned in a hideous cybernetic voice. "Yield to me now and I promise you quick and painless deaths." "Ah, but you see," said Crocker, "it takes true strength to transform..." And he gave a motion of his hand. Back in the Upper Wedge, Tracker, a member of Wave n-1, slammed his armored fist into the Wedge Transformation Button, also known as the nifty-keen SMOKING ALLOWED IN THIS AREA ONLY sign on one of the posts. It Takes True Strength to Transform-------------------FIFTEEN "WARNING: Do NOT engage battloid mode without CVR-3 armor!" --The REF Field Guide The Wedge went to immediate WeDon'tEvenHaveAColorForThis Alert. The alarm system blared "NEE! NEE! NEE! NEE! NEE!" as things started to move. The pavement out front of the Lower Wedge split; E7 started to move across the street; Morgan crumbled as 401 began to descend on a mighty pillar of steel that was not seen before. The entire Wedge started to fold, shift, and change shape. Coyle and his forces fell back. Kevin walked in from the snack machine area, having dug himself out of the dumpster and entered through the stairwell door. Meanwhile, MegaZone was racing out across the Wedge on his obnoxiously large Bahamode, the throttle wide open, and skidding around for a strafing pass with his lasers. The Wedge hit a critical point in transformation; the Wedge Rats scrambled back into the Upper Wedge as the Lower began to rise into the air. The Lower Wedge began to hinge away, the foldawalls folding smoothly away. Then one of them jammed and the entire process hung with a hideous sound of grinding gears. "I got it!" Zoner hollered; he came blasting through the airlock, already transforming, and with all his armor- augmented strength, moshed the wall. SLAM! The device folded into itself and almost dropped into the ninth dimension before stabilizing. Zoner bounced back into the Upper Wedge, rebounded off the support, and settled gracelessly into one of the booths. "Good work, MegaZone!" hollered Crocker as he scrambled to take his position at the controls. "Drive, Yuri!" Kei shouted, shoving Crocker out of the way and climbing up through the roof hatch into Gweepery.Z, now the control center. "You actually want me to drive?" Yuri asked as she followed, incredulous. "Only because I want to be weapons officer," Kei replied, strapping herself into the now-bolted-in WedgeTerm. "But, but, but--" Crocker sputtered. "Sit down and shut up," Kei told him, and slammed the hatch. The Wedge Rats scattered out of the Wedge as it finished the transformation. The arms ripped up out of the ground; Daniels collapsed and Morgan finished. The legs extended from deep in the Earth, where they had lain since created by the fabled First Wedge Rat. His secrets had been passed from generation to generation of Rats, but lost somewhere along the way; from itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy, Ben had found them hidden deep in a .directory in /usr-1, no one had thought of using ls -Ra. Now was their time for use. With a tremendous shifting of mass, the Wedge turned, took a faltering step. It had transformed to a giant mecha unit. Don Ross appeared in the corner, scribbled some notes, muttered, "Oh, geez, what a game, they're gonna love this one," and vanished with a pop. Up in the command center, Yuri slowly mastered the nuances of piloting a mecha with a keyboard and cyberlink (the keyboard concept is familiar to anyone with a lot of PC games and no joystick); Kei's fingers danced over the arrow keys as she settled the crosshairs of her cybersight onto one of the Boomers. "And now, I'd like you to meet a special guest of the Wedge Rats," said Gryphon through his armor amps as he ducked to the left, amazed again at how his bulky armor enhanced his agility to superhuman levels, and slashed a Boomer's head off with his beam katana. "Say hello to our friend, Mister Railgun." Kei smacked the space bar. With a tremendous KLUNK of capacitors and a metallic WHANG!, the huge weapon mounted on MechaWedge's left forearm spat a hypersonic projectile that spitted the targeted Boomer where he stood, neatly pinning him through like a bug on styrofoam. The Boomer's dysfunctional corpse was blown back through the Res Life office, the four-foot section of railroad track stapling him securely to the far wall. "Oh, and our other friend...Mr. Rougan!" Kei hit the Enter key and out of the large barrel on the right arm blasted a fully armored Rougan, howling like a madman and wondering how he had gotten roped into this job. He streaked directly into one of the clusters of Boomers, where he let go with a lot o' mini-missiles and wreaked general havoc. Laughing like a madwoman, Kei proceeded to go absolutely nuts with their friend, Mr. Railgun. KLUNKWHANG! KLUNKWHANG! Boomer after Boomer died. Yuri turned the huge, ponderous mecha unit to the left, stepping uncertainly down Institute Road. Everything would've gone just fine, but she stepped on a moving minivan and the balance of the whole thing got hosed. Kei lost motor control of Mr. Railgun as the arms took over for the failing gyros, flailing uncontrollably. She saw the ground rushing up and screamed: "Yuriiiiiiii, you idioooooooooot!" KER-WHAMMO! With a colossal crash, the Wedge slammed into Gompei's and utterly destroyed that entire wing of Riley Hall. Meanwhile, Ben's armor sensors had discovered the source of the weirdo energy patterns he had been receiving. For one, the reactor was going berserk; for another, there was a mondo drain source under Alden Hall. With no further ado, he used his armor's strength to punch a hole through the wall and have a look. He ran smack face-first into the rest of the Coylian Armada. The rest of the Wedge Rats heard his frantic cries for help and descended on the place with the fury of a million locusts in a wheat field. They arrived just in time to see John Coyle disappear into the new elevator, heading up. The Boomers held them back; laser and missile fire was thick and heavy on both sides, and on both sides there were casualties. Fritz was put out of the action early by an incredible shot that vaporized his helmet; he was unharmed, personally, but in such shock from the circumstances that he slumped to the floor, babbling about MDC structures. The Wedge Commandos reached the elevator-- And the bells rang. Everyone stopped. The bells chimed five o'clock. All was normal; the fight resumed. And then, over the tremendous amp system on Alden Hall and everyone's suit com unit, John Coyle unleashed his secret weapon, the weapon he was counting on to win him the war now that his troops had failed him. He put in the Robotech Perfect Collection, and cued up "We Will Win" by Lynn-Minmei. On infinite repeat. Wedge Rats screamed and dropped to their knees, clutching their heads; some tore off their helmets and threw them away, trying to escape the radios, but only exposed themselves to the outer speakers. Even Ben, who had never heard her sing, was not immune; he kept on for three more steps, stumbled, and collapsed, writhing in agony. A single Wedge Rat reached the elevator. Grimly blocking out the sound and ignoring the intense pain, Kevin Tefft hit the button for the uppermost floor and began his trek to the clock tower. Actually, there was another; Zoner, who liked Minmei's singing, stopped fighting to just stand there and take it in. "Oh, marvelous piloting, Yuri," Kei sputtered as the two of them crawled out of the rubble that had been Gompei's. "Well, you're the one that wanted me to drive, and besides, it's not my fault. That van was in the way--" "Why didn't you avoid it?" "With you shaking the whole goddamn Wedge with that railgun? Somehow I don't think it was intended for full-auto fire like that--" "Oh, sure, now you're blaming it on me." The music began to play; the gunfire stopped. Kei cocked her head and listened; yes, it was terrible music, and if the woman singing had been present Kei would've felt honor-bound to shoot her, but why should that stop the fight? "Kei, I know that music. It's from that videotape MegaZone has." "Oh, that narrows it down a lot." "No, I mean it. It's from...Robotech, I think...the singer that beat the giant aliens. I think Coyle's trying to kill the Wedge Rats with it!" "Well, come on then! Let's go save them." "Kei, we can't. We don't have the firepower to take on all those 'bots and 'borgs by ourselves! We lost our Cyclones in the crash--all we have left are our lasers and our CVR." Kei smiled a wicked smile. "Oh, no we don't. Come on, I have an idea." The elevator door opened; Kevin staggered forth, the pounding in his head getting worse, and made for the stairway to the bell tower. A Boomer emerged from the shadows; snarling in pain and rage, Kevin cut it down. Ahh, CADS. ReRob was right; he had to admit, however grudgingly, that the things were better than his nails. He took the stairs two at a time and smashed the door open with a foot. Coyle, surveying the campus from the belltower, whirled. "You. I might have known." He raised a hand, fist clenched. "I never thought I would say this to you, of all people, but it seems appropriate..." Muscles (or something) flexed under the black leather of his sleeve; three gleaming blades of blue-silver metal, similar to the metal Ben's armor was made of, popped out of the back of his hand. A similar set extended from his other hand. "Shall we dance?" "Certainly." Kevin leaped to the attack, his Cyclone propelling him into furious battle; Coyle's blades smashed aside a humming CADS blade in a shower of sparks. Neither weapon was damaged, but Kevin was amazed at the strength of the parry. Obviously, whatever he was packing inside those limbs of his was not ordinary muscle tissue... At his best, it would've been a fair fight. Handicapped by the constant noise and pain of Minmei singing, there was no contest; Kevin was struggling to stay alive. His one good shot tore free Coyle's mask, revealing his face, sort of intact but crushed, his entire throat and one eye replaced with steel and electronics. Andrew Petrarca was walking peacefully up West Street toward the Wedge area, his Lazer Tag rifle over his shoulder, when he noticed Kei and Yuri running toward him, in CVR, helmet shields open, as fast as they possibly could. He raised a hand to address them, but they were past him; one of them had knocked him down, he hoped by accident, and his rifle was gone. Shrugging, he got up, dusted himself off, and made a mental note to remind them about the property of people who aren't in the LRPG. Zoner wandered into the belltower, having gotten out of his Bahamode to climb the stairs; he noted the disc player wired into the sound system and the Robotech Perfect Collection CD box next to it. Suddenly, he realized that the disc was his, and had been missing from E7 after his magtape got hosed. Grinning at having found it, he ejected, boxed, and pocketed it. Like magic, the music was cut off. Fortunately, Coyle hadn't had time, in his battle with Ktefft, to give his Boomers orders to kill the incapacitated Wedge Rats. Ben struggled to his feet, blood running from his right nostril; he ran a quick systems check. Everything was intact, although the med monitors informed him that he had been better. He got himself fully upright and looked around. Some of the other Wedge Rats were on their feet already, and others who had been worse affected were not, and didn't show signs of being so anytime in the future. The Boomers noted that their adversaries were recovering and went from overwatch mode back into default combat. Suddenly, the building shook with a roar. The doors fell. The Wedge Rats whirled. Down West Street, the muzzle of its cannon emitting smoke, came careening an orange Game Tank from TRON. Across its bow were written the letters "ORANGE". It skidded around the corner and slammed bow-first into the beech tree, shredding a tread. "Ow!" Kei shouted as her helmeted forehead slammed into the gunsight. "You moron, that's the second time you've crashed today." "Look," Yuri responded from the hull, "if you don't like it, you drive! Besides. Zoner never finished giving me lessons." "Shut up, I'm shooting." Which she proceeded to do, quite adroitly, holing the front of Alden Hall with round after round from the Game Tank's chevron cannon. WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM click click click ratchet whirrr... "Uh oh..." The constant fire from the Game Tank had kept the Boomers' heads down; now they rose again, looking quizzically outside, wondering why the crippled vehicle wasn't firing any longer. "Huh," said Jeremy in a loud voice. "Looks like they're outta ammo." The Boomers rushed the tank. "Jeremy, I've wanted to do this for a long time," said Gryphon. "You just gave me an excuse." And with that, he gave Jeremy a tremendous punch in the face, one that shattered the facebowl of his helmet and sent him spinning bloodily into a corner. As he fell to the task of yanking Boomers off the tank, Ben wondered idly if he'd killed him. Not that it mattered. Back at the CCC, Andrew noticed the trontank.gif running on itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy and that it had been somehow stripped four bits. He ran an xrefresh across it--his good deed for the day, he figured. The tread knitted together. "Kei! The tread's back up!" Yuri shouted, and backed the tank rather violently around. The motion pitched several Boomers, a couple of Cyclones, and the Griffin off the hull of the tank, banged Kei's head against first the back of her seat and then the gunsight again, and then smashed the back of the tank into the Higgins basement, where it became well and truly mired. "ARRR!!" Yuri screamed in frustration, slamming her fists down on the control board. "Well, we're in a better firing position now," Kei told her. "If we had ammo." For lack of anything better to do, she targeted a Boomer and shot. WHAM! The cannon bellowed out another chevron, neatly ripping several Boomers in half and narrowly missing chopping Rob Crocker's left arm off at the shoulder. Crocker yelped and dove face-down to the pavement. "Yahoo!" Kei shouted, punching the air. She proceeded to hose many many Boomers until the ammo ran out again. "Damn," she said. "Didn't do enough damage to bring Alden down." "Do we have any other armament?" "Just this strange rifle I picked up from Android." "So, try it already!" "Great idea, but this is a lousy fire position. This looks like a laser...we need to be in a better position to be effective. Say, like, in the middle of the Quad." "No problem." Yuri opened up a channel and requested cover, which was promptly given; moments later, they were in position and Crocker was giving the order to evacuate the building. Happy New Year----------------------------------------SIXTEEN "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!" --Dr. Peter Venkman Zoner heard him; he hollered for Kevin a couple of times, then figured he'd follow and ran downstairs, jumped into his Bahamode, and beat it. Kevin had lost his com gear, indeed, his helmet, to Coyle's blades already, and was in no mood to be hearing MegaZone. He remained behind. Thinking the building was evacuated, Crocker relayed the fire at will order to Kei and Yuri. They knelt shoulder to shoulder on the stone in the center of the Quad, the rifle balanced over their shoulders. With the flick of a thumb, twin eyepieces extended from either side and the fore and aft grips activated. Two spotting beams emerged from the muzzle, spraying onto the sides of Alden. Working quickly and professionally, the Lovely Angels targeted Alden Hall; when their beams lined up, they pulled the triggers in perfect sync. A blindingly white beam of energy shot with a low hum from the muzzle of the gun, transfixing Alden Hall and raying out over the Worcester skyline, its angle carrying it well over anything else. It ran for four seconds, then snapped off like a lightswitch. There was a half-second of utter dead silence. Then the entire building exploded. The backblast blew Wedge Rats all over the campus, vaped Boomers galore, tossed Kei and Yuri back almost to the curb, and blew all the glass out of Harrington's front. Kei and Yuri sat there staring at the rifle; it was obviously more than a laser rifle. Don Ross appeared, walked over to Kei and Yuri, helped them up, and made some notes. "That was incredible! Exquisite! Never before has Alden Hall been destroyed with such style. A wave motion rifle. Excellent! Ladies, I salute you. God, they're gonna love this!" And he vanished again. "Well, that's that," said Crocker as the Wedge Rats assembled in front of the smoking crater that was once Alden Hall. "Wait a second--where's Kevin?" The flagpole on top of Boynton fell to the ground. Everyone turned to look. There, atop the clock tower, Kevin and Coyle battled on, thrown there by the explosion and some incredible stroke of luck. The Wedge Rats gathered in front of the building and watched, transfixed, as the two fought back and forth, spewing epithets and blood in equal proportions. Eventually, they ended up facing each other atop the tower, glowering with looks of pure hatred, their ribs heaving, weapons gleaming and streaked with blood and machine oil. Then, with a tremendous roar, John Coyle charged. Kevin gauged his charge and stepped aside; one of his CADS blades swept in a great crescent arc, while the other shot straight forward. "RRRRRAAAIII--GGGYAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!" said Coyle as he ran across the blades. The crescent arc ripped a great swath down his chest and shredded his entire crotch area; the extended blade centerpunched his chest in a most picturesque manner. Kevin tore his weapons free and stepped completely aside, smashing a palm strike to Coyle's back. Limbs windmilling wildly, Coyle shot out over the edge, tumbled twice, and slammed on his back into the pavement. Rich walked up to him as he lay, moving feebly, severed air lines and shredded flesh in his chest making an ominous slurping sound as his rib cage rose and fell erratically; he stood over the shattered warlord and said sagely, "A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you to slow down." Coyle gave him the finger. Rich kicked him in the face and walked away. The Griffin landed, his jets howling, right next to the broken villain; he flipped up his faceplate and said, "You know, this wouldn't've happened to you if you hadn't've insulted people you didn't know...you've got no one to blame but yourself." "Fuck you," Coyle hissed. The Griffin raised his PPC and sighted. "Not in a million fucking years," he replied, and opened fire. Fifteen rapid shots later, nothing much remained of John Coyle but a burnt spot or fifteen in a Coyle-shaped dent in the pavement out in front of Boynton Hall. "Putz," said Ben as he sent his PPC back to hyperspace and walked back to his friends. His armor sizzled and deresolved, leaving him clothed as before. The door to Boynton Hall opened and President Jon C. Strauss stepped out to the bizarre scene of nearly a hundred of his students, wearing body armor and carrying heavy weapons, standing around a vaguely human-shaped dent in the pavement that held a lot of burn marks and several carbonized bits of something. His jaw dropped. "What is going on here? I demand to know who is responsible for this." "He is," Crocker announced, pointing at MegaZone. "Me?! He's the one who wrote the damn HoloDECstation," Zoner refuted, hooking a thumb at ReRob. "So what? This all wouldn't've happened if he hadn't've rezzed up the Dirty Pair!" ReRob protested, smacking Ben in the shoulder. "That's Lovely Angels!" Kei hollered, shoving Rob back a couple of feet. "Me?!" Ben said plaintively. "I'm not the one who kicked him in the face repeated amounts of times! I'm not the one who blew up DAKA! I'm--" "That wasn't my fault!" Kei yelled at him. "If Yuri hadn't've--" " Me? You're the one whose laser was off safety!" Yuri jabbed. "This laser is never off safety when it's not in use!" Kei replied, drawing her laser and promptly but accidentally shooting Jon Strauss in the forehead with it. "See? See? It's off safety right now, you dumb--" "Hey, hey, there's no need to fight," Ben said, trying to get between them. "We won, we're safe." "Yeah," Zoner agreed. "It's over. But I think we may get in trouble for this..." he finished, motioning toward the now dead form of President Strauss and the rest of the rubble strewn campus. Suddenly, incredibly loud hooting alarms blared from Washburn Shops. NukeEng students in radsuits charged out, hollering and screaming. Zoner collared one of them as he passed. "What's going on?" "Somekindofoverloadthereactor'sgonnablowohgodohgodohgod- we'reallgonnadieeeeeee!" the student replied, then wrenched himself free and charged off down the hill. "It's only a ten-kilowatt reactor," Zoner said, "how much damage can it do?" "Well..." said Ben. "What? What did you do, Ben?" "Nothing! It's just that...when I was in my armor...the magsensors were going absolutely nutzoid over that reactor. There's definitely something very weird about it." "Great. So we defeated John Coyle and the entire Coylian Armada," said ReRob, "and now we're going to die in a reactor explosion." "Not necessarily. Not if we get our butts back to the Wedge like really fast." "You heard the man, let's move!" Crocker bellowed. The Wedge's Final Secret?---------------------------SEVENTEEN "Absolute Disintegration of Available Mass. As applied to the city of Worcester and neighboring boroughs. Wheee!" --gryphon "I hope this works," Ben said, his fingers running over the keys of the WedgeTerm. "If it doesn't, we're toast." He tried to force himself to remember the code for the transform sequence...no...come on...ah, there it is. He typed it in and executed. The Wedge shuddered and began to transform--but not back to the Wedge. Instead it began to fold back in on itself, forming a stack of Upper/Lower Wedge over power core with legs and arms folded around, Wedgeterms atop, M401 on one side and E7 below. From somewhere it sprouted wings. The heaters in the Lower Wedge rose up to extend through the retracting windows to form vast thrusters. The Wedge booths flipped over, forming elaborate control panels. An automated takeoff sequence began. The Wedge had transformed into a large, fugly starship and was now lifting slowly and majestically out of the wreckage of Gompei's. "We're not out of this yet," Ben remarked to anyone who cared, which at this point was everyone. He keyed a couple more commands, one of which, unnoticed by everyone but Yuri, was What do we do next, Doctor? A:> xpocket itsnotmygodddamn- planetunderstandmonkeyboy The Wedge turned and its thrusters flared; it took off for the upper atmosphere. From somewhere a computer voice announced faintly, "Warning. WedgeWarp Drive is engaged. Random figure. Random figure. Negative mass is critical." "Negative mass--oh my God!" jtruss shouted. "Android! He's back at the CCC! We've got to--" "It's too late, we're outta here!" Ben replied. With a terrible whirling, the Wedge dropped into warp drive. VOOM! Earth vanished into the background and disappeared. Two seconds later, the radium-reinforced reactor beneath the Washburn Shops detonated. Remember the explosion from the end of Akira? Cut out all the psychedelic dream sequences and that's what happens to Worcester. Within four minutes, all that remained of the city of Worcester (as well as several outlying boroughs) was a radioactive crater in the Earth. Or leave the dream scenes in, if you like; they won't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, though, as there's no one named Tetsuo or Kaneda in this story. <> And near the center of the crater, glowing ominously and indicating great radioactivity, was a single brick, engraved "PRESIDENT JON C. STRAUSS". Don Ross 'ported into the middle of the conflagration, said, "Oh, GOD! This is perfect! They're just gonna love this at SiliCon!", jotted some notes, and disappeared one final time. The Wedge hurtled through space; the Wedge Rats were excitedly reliving their incredible battle, relaxing, working out kinks, tending the wounded, or mourning the lost. Ben was sitting in the corner, feeling rather morose about being unable to save Android. "Don't worry about Android," said ReRob in a feeble attempt to cheer him. "He probably slept through it." With a clunk, something docked with the roof hatch. Wedge Rats went for their weapons in case it was another attack; then the hatch opened and down dropped Andrew Petrarca and Larry Foard. "Android! Entropy! You're alive!" "Yep. Just before the explosion the Daytona from Hell landed just outside waCCC. Zoner remote rigged us out of there", android beamed, just before Zoner entered the bridge. Hey, look--I'm sorry about what happened," said Entropy to the Wedge Rats. "I honestly didn't know what was going on." He explained what had been going on. "No problem," Ben said, although neither Kei nor ReRob believed he meant it. "Well, look at it this way," ReRob said. "The HoloDECstation got hosed in the explosion and Largo and company with it, I'll bet...we won't have to worry about any of that weirdness again. Right, Ben?" "Uh...right," Ben said, slipping a hand into his pocket unobtrusively and running a fingertip over the small metal square nestled there. Yuri just grinned and winked at him, which had Zoner, Ben, and Kei wondering for weeks. -----------------------------------------------------EPILOGUE "There are billions and billions of stars in the universe." --Carl Sagan Ben sat in the Wedge that "night", long after everyone else had gone to bed, staring out the windows at the inky blackness beyond. In just three months his life had taken an incredibly weird turn, and the funny thing was, he liked it better that way. It was as though he had a place in destiny and it was being fulfilled, slowly but surely. As though the adventure he had just had was only the beginning. "Thinking deep thoughts again?" Kei asked as she entered the Wedge, coming up behind him to circle her arms around him. "Not really," Ben replied. "Just looking at the stars...and thinking about my life..." "You don't enjoy it?" she asked playfully, giving him a little squeeze. "No, I enjoy it all right...in fact, I like it better the way it is now, and that frightens me..." "It shouldn't," she told him. "It's just the way of things." She gave his earlobe a playful nip. "Come on, it's late." "Yeah," he replied, putting an arm around her shoulders as they walked back toward the place his room had ended up occupying, "it is. And it's been one hell of a day. Happy New Year..." Zoner and Yuri sat in the glow of the Daytona from Hell's LED dash, staring off into the deep blackness of the night. "Bah," was all Zoner said. "Hmmm," Yuri asked, snuggling closer to him. "Just thinking about my life these past few months. A couple of months ago, I was a fairly normal college student. Now I'm sitting in a space-capable Dodge Daytona on top of a space fortress, which was once a student union, next to a woman I love, who, by all rules of normality, shouldn't even exist as a sentient person. It is just a lot to handle. `Bah' just pretty much summed it up for me." "Well, it hasn't been easy for me either. I have to deal with the knowledge that I was a fictional character. I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Ben. And after being `derezzed' I have to wonder if it could ever happen again. Am I real? Is it right for me to exist? Why did this all happen? It confuses me when I think about it." "Well, you're real enough for me to love. And you have as much right to exist as anyone else. As to why it all happened, I don't know. I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in random coincidence, which I think this all was." "So, I'm the end result of a coincidence. That's kind of disconcerting," Yuri said, shivering slightly. "Yes, but I'm very happy with this particular coincidence. Sometimes you just have to go with what life sends your way, and I'm glad life sent you my way," Zoner replied, leaning over to kiss Yuri. "Shall, we go for a drive? It's a lovely night," Zoner asked. "Yes, let's go," Yuri answered. Zoner pushed a tape into the player, disengaged the airlocks, and fired the thrusters. <> The Daytona from Hell was soon a small glowing point of light among the stars. "Acceptable," Largo said as he settled back into his luxuriant leather chair, and surveyed his new office. "Now I will begin planning my takeover...and my revenge," he muttered. In case anyone's wondering, here's the complete playlist for the soundtrack album to _Undocumented Features_. Cheers! --Gryphon Introduction: This is the monologue from the beginning of "When the Walls Came Tumbling Down" on Def Leppard: On Through the Night. Money For Nothing: From Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms. In the Flesh?: From Roger Waters: The Wall Live In Berlin 1990. The Chord From Hell: The Ego Twins. Don't Shoot Shotgun: From Def Leppard: Hysteria. Oop!: the bit of Faith No More's "The Perfect Crime", on the soundtrack from _Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey_ that goes "Woops! Sorry 'bout that! It's just an accident." Thunderstruck: From AC/DC: The Razors Edge. Handle With Care: From The Traveling Wilburys Volume One. Sweet Emotion: From Aerosmith: Toys In the Attic. Soldier of Fortune: From Loudness: Soldier of Fortune. Desperado (Live): From The Eagles Live. Fly Me Courageous: From Drivin-N-Cryin: Fly Me Courageous. Save a Prayer (Live): From Duran Duran: Arena. Get Up: From R.E.M.: Green. You Shook Me All Night Long: From AC/DC: Back In Black. She Drives Like Crazy: From "Weird Al" Yankovic: UHF. Love and Affection: From Def Leppard: Hysteria. Build a Fire: From Drivin-N-Cryin: Fly Me Courageous. (It's not mentioned in the text, but it's a parallel song to "Love and Affection, which is the theme for Zoner and Yuri--it's the theme for Kei and I.) Hell Or High Water: From The Alarm: Raw. Head Like a Hole and Terrible Lie: From NineInchNails: Pretty Hate Machine. Country Feedback: From R.E.M.: Out of Time. In the Flesh: From Roger Waters: The Wall Live in Berlin 1990. Back In Black: From AC/DC: Back In Black. Sold Me Down the River: From The Alarm: Change. Its the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine): From R.E.M.: Document. Love Is a Long Road: From Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever. Happy hunting; we think this, properly, tightly edited and well-cut, makes one hell of a mix tape. As for the band, well, Ben & Joe & The Assistance go back a long long way, and the story of their origins is too complex to tell here...email me at gryphon@wpi.WPI.EDU if you want details. GLOSSARY---- By now I'm sure you have a lot of questions. That's what this pseudo-glossary is for. Ok, take it from the top: 1) What the hell is going on here? This story is a simple one, basically designed around a popular theory of fiction: boy meets girl under a silvery moon, which then explodes for no sufficiently explicable reason. (Apologies to Douglas Adams.) It's the story of two beautiful anime characters accidentally brought to life by a typographical error and a compiler created by a drunken programmer one Saturday night and what happens to them on the campus of an American technical school. Kei and Yuri are a team of troubleshooters for the Worlds Welfare Work Association (3WA). They have an admirable 100% success record--and a notorious ~75% casualty record. Usually, the city/planet/space station they are sent to in the course of their mission winds up being UTTERLY DESTROYED, but here's the deal: it's never their fault. It honestly isn't. Perhaps someone who's trying to kill them gets a bit overzealous, perhaps the super-secret scientific thing gets out of control, who knows, but circumstances beyond their control lead to mass destruction. That isn't to say they don't do a good deal of damage themselves--they're very good at their job--it's just that most of their own destruction doesn't involve the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. That part is not their fault. However, the media doesn't see it that way... For those of you with little or no knowledge of the place where this action occurs, Worcester Polytechnic Institute is just that, a polytechnic institute located in Worcester, Massachusetts. The campus computer network is an Encore Multimax 520 running Berkeley UNIX version 4.3, and is notorious for the unreliability of its IRC and NFS connections. A campus map is included with this glossary (unless you got this off of the nets, sorry), indicating such important landmarks as Alden Hall, the Boynton Hall clock tower, Fuller Labs (the building designed by M.C. Escher, Salvador Dali, and Bozo the Clown), and the Wedge. The Wedge is extremely important to the story. It is more than just a public area between two dormitories; it's a state of mind. The Wedge Rats, as they're called, are looked up to by some, looked down on by most, but a fiercely independent group and damn proud of the fact that their interests give the average human being a splitting headache. John Coyle, the chief villain of this story, is a real person; in fact, every named character in this story, excepting Kei, Yuri, and Largo, is real. He is a frat brother who, last year, wrote a long and insulting letter accusing the Wedge Rats of mass homosexuality and other such things. While it is true that some Wedge Rats are homosexual, and others have no particular preference, this infuriated all of the Wedge Rats, as the group is close-knit and tends to be tolerant toward alternative lifestyles. (Isn't this marvellously politically correct?) (Entropy, the villains' chief hacker, is a Wedge Rat, in all honesty; he is included because of his absolute mastery of UNIX, and is absolved of all guilt in the end.) Ok, well, that about does it for "What the hell is going on?"--let's move on to Question 2. 2) Why do some people have more than one name? This is due to a convention among a group related to the Wedge Rats, a group of which I am a member--the gweeps. (The word gweep comes from the noise that a VT100 makes when you hit backspace at the beginning of the buffer--a throwback to the days when the campus terminal of choice was the VT100. Using the computer a lot became known as gweeping, so gweep is both a noun personal and a verb.) The gweeps tend to refer to each other by username, and to others who, although not officially gweeps, use the net a lot. To avoid confusion I'll include a list of usernames: gryphon is one of the coauthors, Benjamin D. Hutchins. megazone another of the coauthors, Brian Bikowicz. The remaining other coauthor, Rob Mandeville, is never referred to by his username, remande; instead, most people call him ReRob. deadshot is Kei. hazard is Yuri. android is Andrew Petrarca. His account no longer exists as he is no longer a student, but the nickname lives on. confused is Rob Crocker. macquivr's real name is John Todd, but most people call him Q. His username arose from his poor penmanship--when filling out his account application, he was trying to write "macgyver". He is called alternatively Macquivr, Quiv, or Q. pfloyd is Adam Johnson. Gee, I wonder what band he likes? RLAMF: An acronym meaning Run Like A Mother Fucker. Rob Crocker has a number of 1/2-level magic spells, including Dig (material component: shovel, casting time: dependent on size of desired hole and fervor of caster), Knock (a hand grenade), Fireball (also a hand grenade), and RLAMF, whose verbal component is "Feet don't fail me now!" HDS31000: A HoloDECstation 31000, which is what you get when you combine the holodeck from ST:TNG with a DECstation 3100, the DEC of choice on campus because 5000s are too expensive and the 3100s were donated for free. itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy: All the DECstations on the WPI campus, except those in the math lab and other labs run by professors, were named by aej, or Allan E. Johannesen, the WPI system's super-user. aej is a big Buckaroo Banzai fan, and all the stations he named bear names referent to that movie, including the WPI master fileserver, a DS5000 named "rugsucker". (It's in there, rent the tape and look for it.) The name of the HDS31000 is taken from a scene near the end, in which General Catburd is screaming at John Bigboote about the mess Yoyodyne has made and asking if he has no pride in his planet; Bigboote responds by hoisting Catburd into the air by the necktie and shouting, "It's not my goddamn planet! Understand, monkey boy?!" VR-052 Battler Cyclone: Oh, come on, you read rec.arts.anime and you don't know what one of these is? How can anyone grow up in this country and not see Robotech? (I grew up in Millinocket, Maine, for God's sake, and I saw Robotech. --gryph) Bahamode: Ok, this one's a bit more obscure. The Bahamode is the transforming motorcycle from MegaZone23; it's red, keen- looking, and obnoxiously huge (its motorcycle mode is bigger than my car). Unlike the Cyclone, which the rider wears and requires special armor beneath, the Bahamode has a full cockpit and can be piloted in the nude, if you're in a particularly silly mood or it's wash day. CADS: Close Assault Defense System. Vibrating monomolecular swords which take the place of missile launchers on the forearms of VR-041 Sabre Cyclones. GRF-3N Griffin III Armored Combat Suit: This is the thing I got my username from. Basically, I had a character in a Marvel Super Heroes campaign who wore a suit of armor based on the Griffin BattleMech from FASA's Battletech game. He was called, surprise, the Griffin, and had a long and glorious history both as a PC and a story character after the campaign folded. When I arrived at WPI, I found that "griffin" was taken as a username, so I varied the spelling. Folks tell me it's much cooler the way it is anyway. :-) The GRF-3N can lift (press) around 90 tons and is impervious to most weapons; its particle cannon is a severe kick-butt weapon. However, my character in this particular tale has no experience at all piloting it, so its full potential is nowhere near plumbed... Alden Hall: This is the performing arts building on campus. It's located right next door to the most sought-after dorm on campus, Sanford Riley Hall, and is currently in the process of being demolished and rebuilt with code wiring and handicapped accessibility. In many of the LRPGs run on the WPI campus, Alden Hall has been destroyed violently. Mostly because it houses a very annoying belltower. The Atwater Kent dumpster: The dumpster located behind Atwater Kent Laboratories is well-known on campus for containing all sorts of stuff one could find a practical use for; it is said that Entropy once constructed a VT100 from junk parts found in same dumpster. (He also built a railgun from a DECprinter once.) DAKA: DAKA Food Services, Inc., poisoning people across the nation. Thought to be an acronym meaning Determined Attempt to Kill Americans. You walk in, hand them your tray, they crack a whip, and the food jumps on. When you enter, they slot your ID card, which has a magstrip on it, and if you're a registered DAKA Warrior, the little box they slot it into goes "BOING!" and you are admitted. ("Ahh! I see you've brought the machine that goes PING!") (I work for DAKA. I'm not on the meal plan. See the point? -zoner) Overeager Civil students from Kaven Hall: It's interesting to a lot of people that the Civil Engineering building on campus is named--pronounce it--"Cave-in Hall"... (People educated in Cave-in Hall designed the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge--you remember, the one in that made itself into a sine wave and then exploded? The one used worldwide as a perfect example of how NOT to build a suspension bridge?) boffa-combat: Fighting people with swords and daggers made of C-PVC pipe, pipe-insulation foam, strapping tape, duct tape, and black electrician's tape. The big rule is: lightest touch counts. Everyone forgets that. gweepery.Z: Once upon a time, Daniels Hall, the dorm/student life admin building, contained VT100s in an area with plenty of room. This area was known as the gweepery by the gweeps of the day. A couple of years ago the gweepery was removed in favor of more student mailboxes. In its place, two VT220s were installed out in the hallway between Daniels and the Wedge, near the commuter student lockers in a very cramped area. Since a compressed file in UNIX has a .Z appellation to its name, this area became known as gweepery.Z. Cheryl.Z: Cheryl Zukowsky, a gweep and probably the smallest person on campus. It was a short logical jump from Cheryl Z to Cheryl.Z. (see above) Vaughn Gross: A living contradiction. Physics major who reads comic books, Wedge Rat football player, non-violent football player--his name even means "small big". A very cool guy whose username is paladin and whose MUD name is reality--thus, reality lives on campus. Also, Vaughn is suspected to be a multidimensional being capable of space- time travel. Don't let Vaughn ignore anything, it may vanish. SKWEEEEEKrrkkkweequeRUNK--wheeet!whio thud: The noise the door from the stairwell of Morgan Hall, where I live, makes when you open it and walk through into the Wedge. P-score, P-points, et al.: From the infamous college purity test. Ask around. CSLANtronix: A small lab hidden deep in the subbasment of Fuller Labs. It's a small cinderblock room full of VT220s, half of which work, and nobody's ever in there, making it the perfect place to gweep in peace. Kevin Tefft/Ktefft: You may be wondering why the Knight of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path reacted so violently and self- destructively upon realizing he had tackled Kevin Tefft...or why he had a flamethrower. That's because Kevin Tefft is arguably the WPI campus' most accomplished flamer, although that notwithstanding he's still extremely cool. (For the utterly clueless, HE'S GAY! Deal.) Card #1: Reid and Daver, two of the Wedge Rats, got silly & developed the card # system a long time ago, before my time. Card #1 reads "You can die now." You don't want to know any of the others. (Of course there IS card #5. :-) -zoner) (Zoner? Card #1. --gryph) The Thai Orchid: A place where you can get food spicy enough to satisfy MegaZone, the guy who thinks Extra Hot taco sauce is water. Danger, Will Robinson, danger! 4.2 from the Bulgarian judge: 42 interrupted by a period. (This is a play on an old, disgusting blonde joke.) Meta Chi: The "fraternity" of the gweeps. Comes from the command Meta-X in Emacs, the gweeps' by-and-large editor of choice. Symbol: ^[X. Gryphon is a member of Meta Chi. Rho Alpha Tau: The Wedge Rat "fraternity". Come on, figure it out. Zoner and ReRob are P.A.T.'s. Gamma Delta Iota: Rho Alpha Tau's sister sorority. G.D.I. means, of course, "Goddamn Independent." Higgins House: A really neat house on campus which is thought by some to be the nexus of a couple of ley lines and a general center of power. Ten Minute Walk: macquivr once announced that he had found a great arcade which was only "a ten minute walk" from campus. People volunteered to go with him immediately; after an hour of walking they arrived. When brought to task for this, Q admitted that it was an hour walk, but that if he had said it was an hour, no one would've gone. Thus arose the Q timescale: one Q minute equals six regular minutes. The Daytona From Hell: MegaZone's car, a fire red '89 Dodge Daytona ES Turbo. A car with a death wish. Not the driver, the car. The WedgeTerms: the two VT220s in the gweepery.Z. On Friday and Saturday nights, the only two terminals on campus. G.L.O.G.: Gorgeous Ladies of GweepCo (another name for Meta Chi). These are the ladies who make gweeping worthwhile. Known to some, mostly those who don't have one of their own, as "disruptive influences" and dubbed "enemies of the state" by Andrew "android" Petrarca. "We Will Win": A song by Lynn Minmei from Robotech. (If you've never heard it, you're luckier by far than I. - gryphon) ORANGE on the bow of a TRON tank: Anyone who's seen MegaZone23 Part 3 may recognize this one. For some reason, a lot of people in MZ23 3 wear orange jackets with the word "ORANGE" written on the back of them--just in case they forget, I suppose. (Most of them are also members of the International Federation of People Who Wear Sunglasses Indoors and/or At Night.) Don Ross: The guy who wrote most of the LRPGs where Alden Hall got vaped. One of the, if not the, best LRPG creators around. Mike: One of Gryphon's friends. He lets himself in, he has no role in this story other than the one cameo. WPI President Jon C. Strauss: A man who the Wedge would dearly like to see dead...