lrmann@uci.edu,gryphon@world.std.com UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES -- FUTURE IMPERFECT P R O V I N G G R O U N D S Copyright (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Uninc. FOREWORD BY AUTHORS --- Ben "Gryphon" Hutchins (gryphon@world.std.com):: What you are about to read is the first of a Undocumented Features story arc called Proving Grounds. It's a section of the Future Imperfect part of UF, which takes place after _Undocumented Features Volume 4: Crossroads_. It appears that there will be several arcs within the Future Imperfect cycle; the basic idea behind Proving Grounds is its focus on, primarily, a small group of characters and the changes that the times cause in them. If you stay with it for the full run, you'll see some pretty dramatic changes; you'll see children be born and grow up; you may even learn something from the people you're watching. Or perhaps, in my eagerness, I overestimate myself, my co-authors, my characters; time will tell. If there is any lesson to be learned in Proving Grounds, it's that time will tell. There are problems with this first installment, from a purist standpoint; I'll grant that. It's very long, much longer than Larry and I originally intended it to become, and yet when we sought to break it up into three or so separate stories, they never sat well with us. The central idea is incomplete without all the story presented. It rambles, and might even seem incoherent at times; but then, so do our lives. Bear with these foibles and you may find the stories themselves rewarding. You may even come to like the somewhat unusual styling. As always, we welcome comments and other feedback, so long as those who criticize don't mind seeing us defend our position. :) --G. 15 December 1994 --- Larry "R-Type" Mann (lrmann@uci.edu):: Welcome to Future Imperfect, and to _Proving Grounds_. I think Gryph pretty much covered it: this is the beginning of one of the most challenging pieces of fanfic which has ever been written. For us, anyway. This thing is big. Really big. Not much for it, though, simply because there's quite a bit to be talked about here. Get ready for a lot of changes. Times are changing, people are changing, growing up. Old problems have been replaced with new ones, and the rules are beginning to change accordingly. My personal opinion: I've learned quite a bit in the course of putting this project together, and I'd like to think that as this story continues to unfold, there will be a lot of wisdom to be found here, wisdom that perhaps we could all apply to real life, and just maybe make this life a little more tolerable. But of course, it's up to you, our readers, to make the final decision for yourselves. That's the way democracy works, after all. :) I promised myself I wasn't going to get long-winded, as I tend to do , so let me finish by saying again that comments and other feedback are welcomed. Just remember to email both of us, okay? :) I stand by my coauthors, and our characters, and I believe we can learn quite a bit from their experience. So, with that said, let's begin. Please enjoy the ride! -RT 17 December 1994 -- /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | "schhKK chKK....... sccchhhhhhhKRRRRRRRRRRKK... *BEEP*" | | -- an Apple 5.25" Disk Drive reporting an I/O error | +----------------------------v------------------v---------------------------+ | R-Type, a.k.a. Larry Mann | | Deus Ex Machina for hire | \----------------------------^------------------^---------------------------/ 23 APRIL 2389 PLANET EARTH CITY OF IRVINE The eastern sky began to change from black to a shade of dark blue, allowing the hills along that horizon to become visible, if only as black silhouettes. It wouldn't be long before the color would lighten further and then change gently into a shade of magenta and orange, ultimately brightening into blue skies as the Pacific sector of the United States moved further and further into Sol's field of vision. But none of those things had happened yet, and the landscape was still dark except for the streetlights, signs both neon and fluorescent, and the rhythmic color changes of traffic lights being controlled by anti-burnout timers. There was no sound except for the inescapable noise of the occasional vehicle which shot down the otherwise deserted I-405 Freeway, often serving as the only indication of life anywhere in the immediate area. Early morning hours were, and always had been, the time of near-total inactivity for the city of Irvine. A pair of headlights differentiated themselves from the near darkness and silence of the city, as a vehicle cruised down Jamboree Road (one of the major thoroughfares of the city), well below the posted maximum speed limits. Each time the vehicle passed under a streetlamp, the resultant light reflected off the aircar's light-colored body and cast a shadow on the ground 20 feet below. The car moved leisurely yet deliberately, as if it knew exactly where it was going but was in no real hurry to get there. An observer might indeed ask where it was going, with the city as dead as it was now. What sort of business was conducted at this hour? The car continued on its slow, quiet path, until it began to near a large, pyramid-shaped building, one of the largest structures in the city. It bore a strong resemblance to the twin GENOM towers in Los Angeles, although this building was shorter and had a considerably narrower base, and was surrounded by several smaller structures in a ring-shaped arrangement. The pyramid itself was completely dark except for the red glow of the aircraft warning beacons at its apex. Some of the surrounding structures were just as dark, while others glowed with orange or white energy from arc lamps which remained on throughout the night. Only one of the darkened sub-buildings chose to betray the identity of this structure to the universe, with a series of large red block letters which spelled "GENOM". That sign, too, remained on all night. Reflections of the car's headlights began to appear in the road as it descended to ground level and turned into the complex's main entryway. It came to a stop at an outer guardpost, sat there for a moment as the vehicle's operator had some brief discussion with the guards there, and then proceeded forward. The car moved into the right lane of the entryway, and then turned onto an access ramp which led to a tunnel, which in turn led underground, illuminated on either side by powerful orange arc lights. The car cruised into the tunnel and disappeared from view, and then all was silent again, the noise of sparse and distant traffic once again the only sound to split the slowly fading nighttime. Approximately seven minutes later, the tower's solid sheen of blackness was broken by the illumination of a single office on the northern side of the building, situated on one of the uppermost floors. Once again, had there been anyone present to notice, they might have wondered why activity like this would be happening so early in the day, wondered what sort of purpose it might serve. In fact the man who now sat by the office window, looking silently out toward the eastern horizon as it began to bear the faintest hints of magenta and orange in its sky, was not entirely certain what it was that had brought him here as early as it was, either. He'd had trouble sleeping the night before -- just a case of 24-hour insomnia, as far as he could tell, but it had reached the point where it wasn't just inability to sleep, but a desire to move around, to get out and do something. So, for lack of any other place to head to at this ungodly hour, he'd gone to the office. Sometimes, going to the office when it was completely deserted like this actually had a relaxing effect and helped him sort things out. This time it didn't help much; his mind was just as jumpy and indecisive as before. Definitely a case of undefined angst, then. The problem of undefined angst had been with him for as long as he could remember, what with his mind always considering all possibilities and creating worst-case scenarios for everything. Now that he was here he didn't want to go out again, so he just kept looking out the window at the sunrise. Anything could happen. What bothered him the most was that all his usual attempts at solving the angst problem had not succeeded. What exactly *was* the problem? What was it he wanted/needed? Did he know? No, not really. That had become a trend of late, what with all the recent massive changes in the world around him, particularly the makeup of his company. All of a sudden there were all these new options and possibilities for the future, and quite frankly it was a little bit more than his mind was up to dealing with. It was hard to say just how much had really changed, actually. The major changes, of course, were that 1) a new Master had taken command, and 2) the company's military division had been ripped apart, and the Wedge Defense Force had taken possession of most of it. (It was supposed to be a good thing, he knew, that latter event. So why did he have mixed emotions about it?) Other than that, GENOM was pretty much the same as it had always been, its basic structure completely unaffected. Some of their holdings had been sold off, and a buyout or three had been cancelled, but GENOM was still essentially the most powerful corporation in known space. The cat's claws had been trimmed, but it wasn't like the WDF had gutted it. A lot of previously secret GENOM papers had gone into the public domain, true, but that would not affect him personally in any way; an equal number of documents had remained secret and classified, and that included the impressive array of data contained in the Black Folders. Actually most of the major Black data had been appropriated by the WDF, but some of the files were still there; he knew because his access codes and clearance still worked, much to his surprise. Black Files... sheesh. His thoughts wandered back to a bookcase sitting in his bedroom, one which contained paper and disc copies of various projects he'd been involved in. A share of those had been located in the Black Files at one time or another. Granted his personal involvement in those operations was not horribly significant, or had been downplayed if it was (GENOM's majordomo ACI, Battia, had been most helpful in this endeavor), but he couldn't erase the things he'd done from his mind. Those reports in his bedroom served as a constant reminder and testimonial to what the company had done to him. In his time he had, to stay afloat, learned just about everything there was to know about all the wrong ways to conduct business. Extortion, forgery, bribery, blackmail... shit, even murder and other things which were more horrendous than he could deal with rationally. Name it, he probably learned how to do it. He'd taught himself how to be evil. There was another side to the whole thing, though. He tended to remember the bad moments more than the good; typical of any human being, really. But for every bad point, there was at least one good one too. GENOM was a lot more than simply an armada of warships and Buma, after all. It was a large-scale industrial manufacturing company, with the same goals and competitive interests as any other corporation on the galactic scene. And had the company's former ruler been less obsessed with certain things, GENOM might have become a very different corporation. His gaze moved away from the sunrise, taking his thoughts along, and passed across the walls and file cabinets. At least two dozen plaques and diplomas adorned the walls, and other service medals and decorations were scattered throughout. GENOM had funded his education through the years (his Doctoral degrees had all been financed through company funds), paid his medical bills and insurance, and had spared no expense on his behalf for his research projects. The awards were for good or outstanding conduct in the various jobs he'd held over the years. It was through this company that he'd learned everything there was to know about the art of doing business. Legitimate business. Through training and GENOM's own workshops and seminars, and a lot of experience both white and black, he'd become one of the best CEOs, one of the best researchers, and one of the best techs, the corporation had to offer. And all that hard work had earned him his seniority, benefits, and a lot of clout and recognition in the corporate world, not to mention one hell of a salary. GENOM had been good to him too. And that's what made the decision-making process so difficult for him now. Did he really want to resign? He could do it. He had enough money to last him for years. But would he lose reliable access to his means of life-extension? And where would he go? The WDF? They did, after all, have the alluring and much more reliable method of life-extension known as Omega-2. But what would he have to do to earn *that*? It was the equivalent of a Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded for exceptional valor or major scientific breakthrough. He wasn't a combatant, and he'd already made most of his greatest discoveries. Shit, it might be unreachable. For that matter... could he even be certain that the WDF would even give him the time of day? Quite frankly, the WDF had every reason to hate his guts, and he wouldn't blame them for it. Some of their conflicts had been at a distance, and others up close and personal. One particular one surfaced in his mind, the one his computer programmer's side would never forget. Hell, no part of him would ever forget what had happened that day. It was a battle which might -- or might not, he really wasn't sure -- have been his closest call ever. The year was 2270. The place was Turing III... 2270 APRIL 20 @ 0131 HOURS SOMEWHERE IN THE NIVEN SECTOR In a quiet office building, R-Type sat down at a desk and unpacked his deck, connecting the power cables to the subspace/subether transmission trunk. The 'frame would think his deck was just another terminal, which was good: he wanted as few ID traces as possible. He worked silently, and on the surface appearing totally emotionless, not even talking to himself as he usually did when decking. This was happening whether he liked it or not, and he didn't like it. It wasn't so much about what was going to happen, as *when* it was happening. That was the wrong and idiotic part. R- Type felt he could honestly say he was the only one who really understood that. And with GENOM, majority rules, especially when Largo is the majority. (Of course Largo would still rule even if he were the minority. Go figure.) He plugged in the programs he needed: LogicProbe and Railgun codebreakers, a daemon containing a couple low-level attack utils, and another daemon which had what was (he hoped) enough defensive equipment in case things went bad, which was, sorry to say, quite likely. He checked his watch. 01:32:00. Rendezvous was in 60 seconds. He shook his head. This was insane, he knew, but try telling Largo that. Largo says "do", you "do", no matter how FUBAR you think the plan to be. R-Type thought this plan was FUBAR in a big way, and he'd tried to explain why to Largo and that idiot Charles LaPlante. Neither had listened to him. He'd considered asking that somebody else take charge of the attack, but Largo wanted *him* there, and crossing Largo was a Bad Thing(tm). Not only that, LaPlante was an ACI expert, and R-Type needed LaPlante's knowledge to proceed with his own ACI experiments. All pros and cons considered, R-Type decided to go through with it. But if he was going to drop into a situation where everything was against him, by damn he was going to be *ready*. He'd signed on earlier, using his normal identity, and briefed his troops on the meeting time and attack plan. At 01:33:30 they would telnet to icc.turing.net, and there rendezvous with their commanding officer, ThunderKnight, known in the real world as Rai Oyasumi. Oyasumi was, R-Type had said, a freelance decker whom R- Type trusted implicitly. The more sentient Cyber-Wraiths were a bit skeptical, but LaPlante had said he could vouch for the T'Knight. (He knew who "Rai" really was.) If all went according to plan, 60 real-seconds later that node would become GENOM's property. Of course R-Type did *not* expect anything to go "according to plan". 01:32:30. Time to hook up. He plugged his cybercables in and issued a dial command... CARRIER SUBSPACE (57600) PROTOCOL: MNP-ETH, v.102BIS CONNECT SUBETHER You are connected to GNM-ts9, a GENNet terminal server. GNM-ts9> 229.100.44.1 Trying 229.100.44.1... Open. GENOM C-OS UNIX: RIGEL.ICS.NIVEN.COM (GENOM C-OS 4.5, update 226801.14) login: royasumi Password: Last login Tue 226912.25@00:04:19 on ttyaQ from GNM-ts9. TERM = (vt100) cspace Loading requested interface... Done. Ready for Cyberspace injection. Connect all cables and press GO when ready... OK. Injecting... The momentary disorientation of the initial noisestorm passed, and R-Type was in cyberspace, standing before icc.turing.net, the datafortress which was the Internet Control Center, the main hub and primary controller for the galaxy-spanning Internet. He brought a Cloak util online, and the virtual representation of the ThunderKnight -- a tall Human man in techno-samurai armor with a black cloverleaf emblem emblazoned onto the breastplate -- disappeared. Now he could observe the still-secure node without drawing undue attention to himself. R-Type had seen this datafortress a couple times before, and each time he was amazed by how mind-bogglingly big it was. The fortress loomed quite impressively on its virtual ramparts, a big white-stone Welsh castle, circa the High Middle Ages. In fact it looked a lot like the castle from David Macauley's "Castle". Very nice. Also very imposing. Its drawbridge, the main access gate, was closed, as he'd expected. R-Type sat on the virtual ground and sighed inwardly. He was still firmly convinced that this was one of the most idiotic things GENOM had ever done. Attacking an Internet node at 1:34 AM, a node which was controlled by people who were, like him, primarily gweeply? How stupid can you get? There was a reason 2200 to 0200 was called the "gweepning". GENOM was doing something which was a lot like walking into a lion's den when the lion was 1) in a really bad mood, and 2) very hungry. He shook himself and forced himself to ramp down the negative vibes. He was the CO of a legion of GENOM Cyber-Wraiths. It wouldn't do to give off a losing attitude. This was one of those funny little paradoxes/ironies that life seemed to get a real kick out of throwing at him. He had to at least *look* like he had a winning attitude. So of course he was going to have to try to win. Of course trying to win would be a serious health hazard. These people would defend this node with all the black software they could dig up. And R-Type's own forces would be throwing equally deadly utilities around. He didn't feel like dying, but it was death either way. Weighing the options, he found that going back and telling Largo that he was an idiot meant inescapable death. (He'd had one conversation with Teleute already, and though she was the most wonderful person he'd ever met, one conversation was enough.) Here in the Net, on the other hand, he at least had a fighting chance. So, the Net it was. [I hate my life,] he grumbled inwardly. He called up a clock icon, which informed him that it was 01:33:27 in realtime. He shut down the Cloak util, becoming visible again. Any moment now... Behind him, three separate telnet gates opened and enlarged to accommodate the massive traffic flow coming through them. His forces had arrived: the legion of Cyber-Wraiths, which were a collection of real-live deckers, Buma, and Cybernetic Intelligences (not ACIs, mind you; they weren't good/smart enough). Also present were the icons of a few LAPCIS ACIs, responding to the call of their designer, LaPlante, for assistance. And R-Type recognized the icon of one of his own creations, a STACIS ACI named Battia, a humaniform with long jet-black hair and cat ears. The majordomo of GENOM itself; well, that did offer a boost of confidence. Battia approached him as the Wraiths continued to pour out of the gates. Those who were already out waited patiently for the next command. "Good evening, ThunderKnight," she said. "I've been informed that you are our commanding officer for this operation." (She didn't recognize him, which was what R-Type had intended. Good.) "I am," R-Type replied. "Lady Battia, isn't it? I was informed that you would be my lieutenant." "Just 'Battia' will be fine. May I call you TK?" she asked, and he nodded approval. She glanced up at the datafortress. "So what's our next course of action?" "Well, if all goes as planned," R-Type replied. "In about 5 real-seconds that drawbridge will drop, and our forces will just move right in; ICC will be ours." "What about internal security?" "There shouldn't be any, if all goes well. Order all forces into ready mode." Battia nodded, forking a command process off to the legion, which responded by moving into a crescent shape in front of the data fortress. From his position near the center of the throng, amid the cacophony of various attack and defense programs being loaded into position, R-Type checked his clock icon. 2 real-seconds remaining... 1 real-second... 01:34... The drawbridge did not open. R-Type glanced at his clock icon again; it was reading correctly. he thought. He allowed a few more real-seconds. Still nothing. "Check me if I'm wrong, TK," Battia said. "But isn't that thing supposed to be open now?" "Yes, it is," R-Type said, anger beginning to rise in his voice. He'd *known* this thing was going to be FUBAR from the very start. 0134 was *NOT* the time to try and take down an Internet node populated by gweeps, especially *this* one. Why was it that *he* was the only one who seemed to understand that?? [Stay cool, stay cool,] he reminded himself. Time to plan some emergency strategy. [Think. LaPlante may just be behind schedule. On the other hand he may have been found out... Can't back down now, he may need help. On the other hand an attack might sound every alarm in the sector. Shit. Okay... activity seems pretty low in there, which would suggest LaPlante *did* knock down most of the internal security himself. And if that's true, then there won't be much in the line of an alarm system. Knowing that...] "LogicProbe!" he commanded. A large boxy device with two light-emitting projections at the front materialized. "Main gate! Full power!" he shouted. It surged forward and plowed into the closed drawbridge, emitting a shower of electrical pulses and sending energy waves rippling across the gate. R-Type could make out several icons appearing on the battlements of the castle, and suddenly arrows began to fly in their direction. Some of the defenses were still operational. "Attack!!" R-Type commanded. "I want those defenses taken out ASAP!" The Cyber-Wraiths acknowledged his command by surging forward and firing their own attack utilities at the castle. Battia drew her sword and charged forward with them, deflecting the missiles shot at her with ease. R-Type remained where he was; he had no desire to place himself in the path of any kind of fire if he could help it, and besides, coordinating the fighting was much easier from this vantage point. R-Type had never actually witnessed defenders taking to the battlements of a castle and raining arrows down on attackers before. It was, virtually at least, quite impressive. For his forces, though, it was a Bad Thing(tm). That castle was everything that a castle of the Middle Ages was meant to be, equipped with sturdy battlements and dozens of murder holes and arrow loops through which attacks could be sent with minimal danger. Getting in was no picnic. The arrows, like the castle, were also deceptive and dangerous. Simple and primitive-looking, they punched through the armor programs of the rank-and-file Wraiths with ease, hosing them quite effectively. This node had been designed extremely well, designed to keep groups like GENOM from getting in. "So much for 'I'll handle the guards'," R-Type grumbled, dragging a hand across his face. The logic probe, unconcerned, continued hammering away at the main gate, and reported that it was making progress. Evidently LaPlante and the Sysops who'd sided with him had at least done part of their job, taking down most of the site's inner defenses. R-Type scanned the battlements from his position of relative safety, for anyone who might be a ranking officer or even a Sysop. He knew there had to be at least one on duty, maybe more, especially at this hour. he thought, trying to will the logic probe to do its work faster. Every nanosecond counted now... It was then that he noticed the One Thing That, Even in a Worst Case Scenario, was Never Going to Happen(tm): The transmission tower was active. Someone was sending out a message, and it was obviously not to him or any of his forces. That fact had several implications and possibilities attached to it, none of which were very pleasant from R-Type's point of view. "Railgun!" His right arm 'morphed into a hardsuit railgun and he aimed for the tower, hoping to kill -9 the process and stop the message before it got sent. By the time he was ready to issue the firing command, however, transmission had stopped. Either the sender had completed his/her request or it had been cut short. Either way, somebody was going to notice. This was not good at all. He sent a message of his own, a call for additional forces. Reason: code black (read: Completely Fucked Up, But You Said No Retreating, Sir). From within the battlements of the castle, he heard a man's voice bellowing to some hapless subordinate: "WHERE IN THE FLYING HOLY HELLS IS SQIRL, DAMN IT ALL?!" Well, that was one good thing, he hoped. With their strongest Sysop missing it would give R-Type's forces a slight edge. They just might pull this off after all. The logic probe kept bashing away. The gate was obviously weakening. It was also obvious that they were attempting to shore it up from behind. The two interaction curves *were* beginning to spiral down slowly. The probe *was* winning; he'd designed his codecracker well. But with the ongoing attempt to reconstruct the gate from inside, there would be delays. And now, any delay could have horrible consequences. "Go to 110%! Emergency power!" R-Type ordered the probe. And it did just that, but it was already strained to near maximum and so offered very little gain. The probe reported in as having the gate 95% decoded... 96%... 97%... 98%... Suddenly there was a whistling noise, and R-Type discovered that he was standing in the corner of a very large shadow. Ohhh SHIT! Dodge left! NOW!! An object he recognized as the virtual representation of an anvil crashed into, and crashed, the logic probe, vaporizing it. The drawbridge was still up. In very bad shape, but still up. "GAAAH!" R-Type shouted, quite miffed at losing his codecracker. From above, he heard a voice: "Heh heh. Whatta yutz." Oh Jesus. He knew who it was. So much for the 'slight edge'. Unless he could get that goddamned gate down. He ran a quick scope on the door's integrity, and got a mildly comforting response: he'd seen tougher datawalls on a Commodore 6.4T. Hell, he could probably crash this thing himself. He raised his arm and started the firing sequence for the Railgun's attack subroutine. "All forces!" he called. "Get ready to move and move fast!!" The railgun was charged and ready to go. He issued the firing command-- And at that moment, and for the second time that evening, something Impossible happened: The fortress, the entire vast Internet Center node... *disappeared*. Vanished. R-Type's railgun spike sailed through space and, finding no target, simply fizzled out. "Baaah?!?" R-Type remarked. Several of the ACIs and the more sentient Wraiths bore similar expressions of disbelief. "That's IMPOSSIBLE!!" he shouted at no one in particular. "They CAN'T shut it down -- not in less than five minutes!!!" Fuck. Well, this was completely ballsed up, and with the site somehow shut down there was nothing at all GENOM could do. Now he had a legit excuse for cutting his losses and getting the snord out of there. Finally. <**ERROR**,> his deck replied. Oh shit. "What the fuck...?!" Hell of a time to have something like this happen, and for no visible reason. It seemed that someone or something was blocking him, but... who or what? He scanned the area frantically and detected nothing. What was holding him?! And at that moment, all hell broke loose. The "sky" over the spot where the fortress had been, crackled with energy in a display very similar to atmospheric lightning. And then it split open and poured blue light on the landscape, obscuring -- in fact *erasing* -- most of the detail from this area of cyberspace. In the middle of the lightstorm, R-Type thought he could make out a dozen or so icons dropping to the plane of the cyberspace node. Then, with a thunderclap, the sky closed up again, leaving nothing behind but the endless grid of cyberspace. Most of the Intercenter's guardians had been dumped offline when their machine went down, but this was of little consolation, because R-Type still recognized most of the icons that confronted him. The glittering blue-silver armored one with the faceless bowl helmet had to be Gryphon, and the large black manshape with all the silver circuitry bits was undoubtedly MegaZone. To Gryphon's right was another form, similarly encased in armor, although this one's was not the angular, recognizable GRF-3N shape, but rather gleaming CVR-3 and what seemed to be a Battler Cyclone, which was apparently an attack/defense daemon of some kind. That would be ReRob. [Oh great... the WDF found out...] Then again, he supposed he shouldn't be surprised about that. That was probably who the message sender had called, after all. Arrayed behind them were several more that R-Type thought he recognized. The dark-haired gent in the mosh boots and leather jacket would be Crimson. The guy with the chain mail and the huge sword was undoubtedly Tracker. The stick figure with the shock of unruly blond hair had to be Jer Johnson, and the 40's Gangster Type in the Blue Pin-Stripe and Black Fedora was clearly Lightnin. The ninja with the purple costume and the Information Society logo on his chest had to be /dev/null, and the unassuming dark haired gent in the VERY overstuffed grey canvas jacket was Android, apparently. Next to him was Eric "ear" Rasmussen, the Man with the Very Orange Feet. It wasn't hard to guess who the raven-haired beauty next to MegaZone was. Just wonderful. Of all the people appearing, Hazard was the one he was least inclined to confront. How could he confront someone he had always idolized? Especially when *he* was on the "wrong side", as it were? Thank you, LaPlante, for obviously fucking up so badly that you attracted the attention of practically everyone in GweepCo. This was Very Exceedingly Bad... Scattered among the gweeps were a few of the Sysops of Turing, too: R-Type recognized Larry "Entropy" Foard's techno-knight, and the reality-modeled Veltari Salusian form of Dr. Slappi Sqirl, the Turing Chair-Sysop, handbag, green hat and all. There was Dr. Teng Chitaia and Dr. Rebecca Stallman of Earth, and Mixta Vardis-Al of Dralas. And there was none other than Mainframe, from Cybertron... "Bad thing, bad, bad thing... very bad thing..." R-Type mumbled as he scrolled through the list of icons. "Very, very, horrendously exceedingly bad thing..." And then, to top it all off, several telnet gates behind the Turing defenders opened up, and out poured what had to be at least two legions of Imperial Salusian Cyber- Marines, effectively matching GENOM's contingent entity to entity. And with them came many more familiar icons: John "macquivr" Todd, Liz Stewart, Josh "mute" Brandt, Ralph Valentino, Mike "elric" Voorhis... Good Lord, *everyone* in GweepCo was here. "Fuck me..." R-Type wheezed. He tried to punch out again, got the same error message again. Fuck. This was *BAD*... Then suddenly he was not alone. Behind him the telnet gates opened up and the long-awaited Wraith reinforcements began to pour through, accompanied by several more LAPCIS ACIs, and another STACIS CI: a young blond girl named Lufy, one of GENOM's most decorated combat ACIs. No other STACIS ACIs appeared. Just as well; R-Type wanted no more of his own creations involved in this debacle. Then, with a flittering cybertransit effect similar to the transporter effect from Star Trek: The Next Generation, there appeared next to R- Type the four Sysops of Turing that GENOM had turned: there was Dr. Max Morris of Earth, and the Vruskian J'itaya K'kr'k, who had hoped that GENOM's takeover would increase the Net's efficiency. Next to him was the squat Dalek tank-form of Vardak Emaya Vitan Vak, the system's only Skarosian operator. And, of course, the Turing Turncoat himself, Charles Foreman LaPlante, currently dressed in rather scorched-looking techno-samurai armor very similar to R-Type's. R-Type was not at all undecided over whether or not he should be happy LaPlante was alive. He wasn't. It was that simple. He had an intense feeling that something was missing from this little get-together, as though there was someone or something that should be there but wasn't. Maybe it had something to do with why he couldn't punch out of this mess before he got hosed? He had no time to think about it any further, though, because a voice boomed across the expanse: "Attention, GENOM forces," announced the circuit-man. "You have attempted to take over a public facility for corporate usage. This is in violation of Section 2, Subsection 9 of the Internet Charter and comes under the clauses of Part 5, Wedge Defense Force Code." Judging by its voice it was quite obviously the WDF commander, as R-Type had suspected. "CEASE AND DESIST." Now R-Type was perfectly willing to do just that, and in another situation he would have raised his hands in surrender and ordered all his forces to do the same. And they most likely would have understood, the situation being as screwed as it was. The smart warrior knew a hopeless fight when he saw one, and knew when to retreat so he could fight another day. But, unfortunately, R-Type was no longer in a position to be giving orders. LaPlante -- special thanks to Largo for this grand decision -- had been given mission seniority, and he was not interested in surrender. "KILL THEM!" he shouted, and the entire contingent surged forward. Battle was joined. R-Type was thankful for the fact that he currently existed as Rai Oyasumi and not Larry Mann, that his callsign was currently 'ThunderKnight' and not 'R-Type'. That wasn't much of a consolation, though. It might protect his identity but it wasn't going to protect his life from the black software that was almost certainly about to be unleashed. For one instant he wondered if he *should* have packed some black software. No, no killers. He didn't want to kill anyone here. Except maybe LaPlante, but that was different. He called up his most powerful Shield program, which provided him with a full- length body shield, and a defensive Flatline sword program which would dump whoever it hit offline and fry their cyberdeck so they couldn't get back on. And not a minute too soon, as several and varied attacks began to sail back and forth. He stayed with the throng of Wraiths and GENOM personnel who were now engaging the WDF icons, but he hung toward the rear. Not *too* far back; he didn't want to look like a deserter; if LaPlante survived this he could seriously fuck up R-Type's clout by calling him a deserter. (Yahright, but R-Type didn't want to take that chance.) Nobody seemed to notice, though; they were too busy following LaPlante's orders and defending themselves now. From the rear of the battlefield, he had a much better view of the complete and utter chaos that had begun, as Cyber-Wraiths and Cyber-Marines went after each other, dropping and de-rezzing each other like flies. The lower-echelon warriors of each side were quickly dispatched, either Dumped or Flatlined by said routines, or flat-out killed by black programs. Eventually the strongest warriors, namely the renegade Sysops and the guardians, began having at it. R-Type, when he wasn't taking a few seconds to flatline an attacking Cyber-Marine or dodge a Hellbolt, or engaged in combat with the Sysops and gweeps himself, watched with a morbid fascination as they went after each other with many and varied attacks. Here Gryphon reduced one of the stronger Wraiths to a cloud of free errors with a bolt from his "particle gun"; there the purple ninja "stumbled" and ran another through with his outstretched sword, righting himself with the impact. Here one of Dr. Sqirl's anvils crushed one and nearly took out the Dalek Sysop in the process. There, MegaZone went after LaPlante, attacking him with his (so to speak) bare hands. It was complete and utter chaos, and from where he was, R-Type could see that the guardians were getting the upper hand. The renegades were losing ground, being kept off balance by the almost constant aerial attacks produced by Dr. Sqirl. This was not good. About then -- and since he still couldn't sign off -- R-Type's sense of loyalty/duty returned: he couldn't just sit there and watch them be slaughtered. He was on their team. It was a fucked-up team, but it was *his* team nevertheless; he had to do something to help. Doing a quick analysis of the situation, he decided that the thing that was giving his people the worst problem was the black software which Dr. Sqirl was taking great delight in using. If he could get her out of the picture, it might even the odds again. Those anvils just had to stop; it was that simple. He powered up a Dump utility and sighted on her. At the moment she was concentrating on knocking down the Dalek's code shell; maybe in that moment he could hit her, knock her offline. The Dump program wouldn't do any damage, of course, but in the time it took for her to log back on, the tide could turn. He'd probably have to kick several others off in this manner as well; Dr. Sqirl would be the first. Dr. Sqirl was, with an evil grin on her face, preparing to drop an anvil on the Dalek when R-Type's program gave a READY signal. He aimed and issued the rapid-firing command; he'd need to use this program several times in a big hurry... ...but before it could execute, there was a wrenching signal distortion, and he was yanked away. This felt unsettlingly like being caught in a noisestorm, except that this felt quite deliberate, as if someone or something had caused a Netsplit and pushed him into it on purpose. he wondered. "Gravity" reversed itself, and he felt the universe tilting under him. Then he crashed to his back, landing on something soft. Opening his virtual eyes, he looked around, and found himself in a gridroom about 10 "feet" square, lying on a large soft mat. In the corner, an icon was standing... No, not an icon... A *person*. This wasn't a bit-and-volt replica of some user connecting from the outside; R-Type could *feel* that. This was *someone*, someone who lived here, in the Net. Someone who belonged here. And R-Type had the sudden feeling that he did *not*. "I'm sorry," said the woman, in a beautiful and melodic voice. "But I couldn't let you do that." R-Type just stared at her for a moment, still trying to decipher just what had happened. She was very beautiful, with silvery hair and a slender build. R-Type thought she seemed familiar, felt like he should know her, but try as he might he could not place her. It seemed like a cheesy question to ask, but he did it anyway: "Who... who are you?" She smiled quietly, as if more privately than outwardly amused, and her golden eyes twinkled. As she walked across the room, her silver hair slowly turned green, and the diaphanous gown she was wearing seemed to congeal, darken, and solidify around her, becoming a red jumpsuit with a checkerboard design over one front pocket. "Most people call me Eve," she said. Eve...? A huge memory block disappeared rapidly. EVE-1A?! Ho-ly shit... could this really be happening? For a moment he forgot how to speak; this was nothing short of incredible. She looked at him. Or maybe through him. He really couldn't be sure. "I suppose there would be little point in asking you what you think you're trying to pull, Larry." R-Type froze. He heard his heart (he supposed) stop, then start beating so rapidly he feared it would explode. Silently his mouth formed the words "oh shit". *Nobody* was supposed to know that Rai Oyasumi was really Larry Mann (with the possible exception of LaPlante and Largo). That cover had been designed very carefully, designed to be impenetrable! He felt himself starting to inch backwards, away from her. "There's no need to be afraid," Eve said. Suddenly there was nothing supporting R-Type, and he fell to the floor with a thud. Correction: the ground. They were apparently in a park. It was springtime, and the birds were chirping. R-Type looked like himself now, only much younger -- in his early 20s or so, probably the same age as Eve appeared to be -- than he actually was at the moment. He was dressed casually, for the weather. So was Eve, in the jeans-sneakers-denim-jacket ensemble favored by college students everywhere. "It was only a simple question," she said. "Uh..." R-Type was still having trouble regaining his command of the Standard language. Good Lord, here he was, next to the most powerful Autonomic Cybernetic Intelligence in the known galaxy, maybe even the known universe. And she was obviously in complete control of this environment, wherever it was. He began to feel kind of stupid for fumbling as badly as he was. Just then, with a start, he realized that the birds in the park were chirping the tune of Pachelbel's "Canon in D". He loved the tune quite a bit, but he'd never heard it presented quite this way. "This is weird..." he mumbled, his eyes panning across the scene. "This isn't weird," Eve said with a sunny smile. Suddenly he was weightless and looking down at the Crab Nebula, which he appeared to be standing on, and rotating slowly. "This," said Eve, dressed in a cheesy typical bad-SF-film clear-bubble-helmet space suit and perched on a nearby spiral galaxy's arm, "is weird." And they were back in the park again. "There's something different about you, R-Type," she said. She was sitting right next to him. "You're not like those other attackers. You don't have any black utilities at all in memory. In fact you don't have anything except that carrier-killer, the Railgun, and your defensive equipment. Seems to me your heart isn't in this. And then there's that supposed cover of yours. If your company is attacking Turing, why not stand up and support them proudly, and use your own name? Doesn't seem right to me..." R-Type was suddenly very bundled-feeling. There was a good reason for this: he was dressed in a heavy parka, gloves, boots, and ski pants. They seemed to be standing on a snowy plain. Saturn (or at least, a ringed gas giant) loomed menacingly in the purple sky. Eve pushed her ski goggles up on her wool-capped forehead. "So, what's going on, anyway?" R-Type had gotten so caught up in the change of scenery and the photorealistic -- no, more like hyperrealistic -- quality of all the imagery that he'd completely forgotten what she'd asked. "Er, sorry... what was the question?" Eve looked mildly irked, then smiled again. R-Type was much warmer. They were underwater. Eve's hair was now red, and she seemed to have become a mermaid. R-Type dared not look at himself. "I *said*, you're obviously not as gung-ho as the rest of those GENOM attackers, so what's your motivation?" An answer to that question came, and it was the honest-to-God truth, as far as he could tell. Trouble was he'd heard or seen it in one too many movies and books, seen it used as an excuse for some evil stuff. It sounded hokey as hell. But, it was also the truth: "Would you believe I'm 'just following orders'?" "I could believe that." With a difference so distinct it almost hit physically, the water was gone. They were in the biggest, most ornate bloody ballroom R-Type had ever seen, real or otherwise. Eve had returned to fully human form; her hair was brown now, and she was dressed in an ornate golden ball gown and high white gloves. An orchestra started playing. She took R-Type's hand and began to dance with him to what sounded like a Bavarian waltz. R-Type felt... hairy. (And he FORCED himself to concentrate: DANCING FURNITURE?!) "It seems to me you're caught. You feel like a trapped animal, and I don't think it's because of me." "Uh, erm--" he was startled by the growl his voice had become, but he quickly reminded himself not to freak out. That would probably be a bad idea right now. "Well... no, it's not you... I mean... this *was* hardly the ideal time for us to take a stab at Turing III." At last he'd spoken something resembling a coherent sentence. His confidence had returned a little. "They just didn't understand what they were dealing with." Disoriented momentarily, R-Type regained his bearings to realize that he was in the passenger seat of a car. The photorealistic quality of the reality had slipped to something very poor, but it gave the impression of being *intentionally* poor: there were exaggerated motion lines and a lot of truly *bad* bits of scenery motion in the background. Eve, driving the car around the badly animated mountain road, shouted over the roar of the wind: "And what is it, you think, that they ARE dealing with?" No sense in holding back, R-Type decided. It would be quite a relief to say this: "They're dealing with gweeps," he called over the wind. "Which makes 1:30 AM the worst possible time to do something like this. They were just begging for a foul-up. There's a reason why 2200 to 0200 is called the gweepning, after all." Motion stopped. R-Type almost fell on his face. It was cold and foggy. Eve was dressed in a trench coat and fedora hat. A large clock tower bonged dolorously in the background. "So it's more a matter of bad timing than anything else?" "Horrible timing. A better time to take a place like Turing by surprise would be noon hour. I tried to tell them that but they wouldn't listen to me--" He trailed off. Should he have said that? (When he trailed off, the clock started bonging the Jeopardy! theme...) They were on the Moon, in bathing suits, stretched out on blankets under a large stripey umbrella. Somewhere, a radio was playing "Beach Blanket Bingo". "You could be right. I encouraged security to be increased during the noon to five shift, actually, on the assumption that GENOM's operational planners would have a little more sense than Ihara and Grubb gave gridbugs." She smeared a bit of sunblock on her arm, adjusted her shades, passed him the bottle of lotion, and said: "But apparently, that wasn't the case. You didn't answer my question, though. WHY take the Intercenter? And why are YOU, personally, involved? I was under the impression that Dr. Lawrence Robert Mann, Ph.D., was a biocybernetics researcher." R-Type was in the middle of applying the lotion to his own arms when that last sentence stopped him in mid-rub. She'd obviously done some digging. Well, actually it wasn't a big secret that he was a biocybe person. Why was he personally involved? That dealt with some issues he would rather not deal with right now. He could answer the first question, though, although his heart wasn't really in the answer: "Why take the Intercenter? If I understood the planners correctly, it'd give GENOM a monopoly on the communications networks. I know for a fact there was at least one Sysop who thinks our presence would improve the efficiency of the Net." They were on the roof of a very tall building, sitting with their feet dangling over the edge of the roof. R-Type fought vertigo for a moment. "That's ridiculous. GENOM could never hold the Net, and even if it did, alternets would spring up within weeks. There can't be any such thing as a cyberspace monopoly. But then, you wouldn't know that, would you?" She shrugged. "Assuming, for a moment, that you believed such a thing possible, why be involved with it? It's hardly your field." Why, indeed? He'd known all along that the whole cyberspace monopoly idea was bullshit. If the plan had succeeded the Internet would collapse in favor of the Alternets. He knew that. So why was he here? Why was he involved? He had reasons, but did he *really* want to tell *Eve* what they were? No, not really. He wasn't ready to give a long list of his motivations for associating with Charles LaPlante, a known traitor to the WDF. Even after 300 years he still had the damndest time explaining himself when confronted unexpectedly on any subject; he never had "good" (in his opinion) answers to a question until about 15 minutes after it had been asked. Nevertheless, Eve expected an answer right away, and he had to find one that was true, if a bit vague. He found it: "I was a computer scientist before I was a biocybe tech. Hell, I was a gweep. I've always had that Netrunner urge in me. Largo probably had his reasons for singling me out -- most of which don't make sense because he didn't listen to a word I said -- but I didn't ask why. He wanted me to lead the contingent which was going to take the fortress, so I did. Well, I *tried*. I just followed my orders, and he sent me down there..." This wasn't making much sense, he felt, and he knew Eve was going to push for more. Things he didn't feel like talking about. He wanted off of this subject. "...I *suppose* it's 'down there'," he fumbled, looking around. "All these, um, 'scene changes' are a little disorienting." Yahright, try totally confusing. "Scene changes?" They were walking through dark catacombs. Eve, in front of him, was wearing a leather jacket and fedora, with a bullwhip on her belt and carrying a torch. R-Type felt something on his head, and discovered he was wearing a fez. Eve turned, smiled, pinched his cheek and kissed his nose, and said: "Just a little thing I do." Then she strode forward, leading the way down the tunnel. Several rats and mice scurried past. R-Type nearly stepped on one, and could have sworn he heard it say "Yipe--NARF!" as it dodged aside. Of course, it must have been his imagination. "Changing the background relaxes me," Eve continued. "Just concentrate on something stable, something that doesn't change. My face, for example, or your session manager icon." R-Type decided that Eve's face was indeed the thing to concentrate on. He was, after all, quite taken with those golden eyes of hers. The ACI designer in him was having a field day just observing how advanced and powerful she was. Numerous theories abounded concerning her origin; who programmed her, etc. He'd love to get a chance to experiment with the computer system, whatever it was, that created her. Maybe *this* was the system he needed to experiment with, not LAPCIS... "Thank you," he said. He was possessed of a sudden desire to make small talk, in the fervent hope that he could get this conversation on a different track. The more he talked, the more likely it was that his head would be separated from his body when Largo read the reports. "Um, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you're very fascinating, Eve. I'd love to, well for lack of a better phrase, 'get to know you better'. I mean, I'd love to meet whoever it is that made your existence possible." Was he rambling? Probably. Eve smirked a bit. "That's a creative way to change the subject," she observed. "Damn she's good," R-Type mumbled to the closest wall. Well, it was worth a try. They were in a car stuck in Irvine gridlock (a combination of both ground- and aircar traffic; gridlock was actually a rare thing in Irvine, but when it happened, like, ouch). Three black and white creatures of indeterminate type bounded over the roof, down the hood and vanished into the traffic, pursued by what looked like a very fat policeman. A snippet of music played and stopped. It was Irvine, all right, right down to the pruning on the trees and the beige paint on the houses; shit, this was the corner of Barranca Parkway and Jeffrey, *exactly* as it existed in realspace! She'd gotten this image from *somewhere*, and there weren't many image files of Irvine streets out there. He felt uneasy all of a sudden. "Perhaps you would rather just return to the battle," Eve said. "You seem to feel as if you have a duty to perform, and I must respect that." Before R-Type could protest, there were a lot of strange disruptions in the fabric of virtual space-time. When R-Type was cognitive again, he was back in the battle. Dr. Sqirl dropped her anvil on the Dalek and crashed its weapon utility. With a terrible shock, R-Type realized that *no time had passed*. *None*. He looked around quickly, reassessing the situation, and himself. As far as he could tell, everything was running as it should, with the following exceptions: 1) the Dump util he'd loaded had powered down again, 2) his Flatline program had crashed, so he had no other weapons, and 3) there was a fez on his head. He had no time to think about the last two right now, however. He hastily ran the Dump's startup sequence again, pre-setting it for rapid fire. He needed that utility if he was going to do anything here. In the meantime all he could do was wait and watch: Tracker and J'itaya were pounding away at each other. The Vrusk's ambidexterity gave him a slight edge when fighting with multiple swords, but Tracker was wearing him down with his own huge weapon, and finally knocked one of his swords away. One slash later, J'itaya K'kr'k vanished in a flash of electrons. Zoner ducked a Needlestorm from LaPlante and replied with a Firestarter; it missed, darted past R-Type, and ashed one of the Wraiths next to him. That was close... LaPlante caught Zoner with his next Needlestorm, weakening his signal ratio, and then prepared a Shatterbolt, which might actually have a chance of flatlining him -- but Eve appeared, then, standing behind LaPlante. She tapped him on the shoulder as he prepared to fire, and as he turned around, she said: "I'm sorry, Mr. LaPlante, but I can't allow you to do that." Time had ceased to function again. The battle was frozen -- only LaPlante, Eve, and, to his surprise, R-Type had proper signal. With a shock, R-Type realized that he had been left in the loop, so to speak, deliberately. Eve wanted him to see what happened. What happened on LaPlante's part was predictable; he retargeted his Shatterbolt at Eve, who was much too close to miss. "Don't do that," Eve instructed him. "If you do, you will regret it. I don't want to hurt you, Mr. LaPlante." "DIE!" LaPlante replied, and fired. The Shatterbolt fizzled and vanished, and, as LaPlante's shocked eyes met Eve's sad ones, she raised her hand and made a simple waving-away gesture. Charles Foreman LaPlante de-resolved like a statue of sand in a heavy wind, scattering into a million twinkling bits which flickered out as they cascaded away. "Gah!" R-Type remarked. His emotions about that were *very* mixed. Eve turned sadly to Larry and said, "I try to give everyone a chance... but some people do not want it." She sighed and changed the subject. "Since this conversation seems to be stalled around your unwillingness to answer my question, why don't I take a stab at answering it FOR you?" R-Type said nothing. He felt rather helpless. Talking about this whole matter could get him killed, after all. But suppose Eve knew everything already...? It wasn't impossible, and if *he* didn't actually say anything more... Eve read his silence correctly. She understood his situation perfectly, but now it was time to push harder. She looked at him, transfixed him like a bug on a plate with the steady gaze of those amazing gold eyes of hers, and said, slowly and distinctly as she walked toward him with a measured stride: "I think you feel you owe something to GENOM. I think you're a man who belongs in the Wedge, who's caught between his sense of obligation and his nature. I think you're feeling trapped. I think they have some hold over you, now that you've been with them so long, and it's more than just your conscience. I think you deserve another shot. And I think I'll be seeing you again." She reached over, took the nape of his neck in her hand, and kissed him. Then, she was gone. Time returned to normal, and Zoner looked confused for a moment before turning and erasing a Wraith-Commander as Dr. Sqirl dropped an Anvil on it simultaneously. "Heh, whatta yutz," Slappi snickered. "Y'know," she said to Zoner as she dusted her hands off. "You remind me of a very young T- 1000." And with that she waded back into the fray, laying about her savagely with her handbag and crashing most of the few remaining Wraiths with it. "Unique..." R-Type muttered. "Very unique..." About then his Dump util reported READY. Now to select a target... Gryphon sent a spread of bolts into the Dalek, cracking its datacase and de-rezzing its armor utility; Tracker waded in with his huge sword and hacked it in half along the rent. Screaming an electronic death shriek, it vanished completely. R-Type scanned the battlefield, and realized he could find nobody worth assisting. The Wraiths were already decimated. The renegade Sysops had been destroyed, as far as he could tell. Even the ACIs had vanished, whether fled or crashed he didn't know. He hoped to heaven Battia and Lufy were all right. He lowered his firing arm in disbelief. Everyone here from GENOM was dying or dead. It was just him........ and them. Damn it, he KNEW these people, some of them. What had he been THINKING? He took a step backward as they began to advance on him. And then, suddenly... ...with a painful bang, his head hit the desk, and he started violently with the blossom of pain that spread across his forehead. The violent motion toppled him over on his back in a tangle of desk chair and cybercables, which pulled free of his deck to whip almost comically around and tangle in the back of the chair. Reflexively turning up his pain editor, he glanced upward at the light fixture. He was back in realspace. What the hell had just happened? He clambered to his feet, his aging joints protesting vehemently. At the biological age of 80 his body just didn't have the kind of zip that his brain did. But he wouldn't need a RETRO session until 2290, or thereabouts. He righted the chair and took a look at his cyberdeck. It appeared to be undamaged. The last lines of text on the display buffer read: @$#!^23423adlk*23)(. NO CARRIER [Line noise??] R-Type thought. [On a secure line like this one??] Not likely. Nor was it likely that a chance noisestorm had booted him off the Net at exactly the most convenient time. Just then he noticed another line had appeared in the display. You have new mail. Hm? He typed "inc" on the keyboard. Instead of going to a mail index like it was supposed to, the deck went straight to the message: Received: by genom.com from localhost with SMTP id AB33014 (4.05c/IDA-1.4.4 for ) Path: !genom!lmann@genom.com Content-Type: Text To: lmann@genom.com From: eve@net Subject: Have a nice day. Larry, I hope you enjoyed your little tour of my domain. I hope it taught you something. Just remember, it never hurts to help. - E. PS. Merry Christmas, you're alive. :-) PPS. This message will self-destruct. EOF. A few seconds later, the message erased itself from his deck's screen, and from memory. He had, according to the path, apparently mailed it to himself. But he had *not* been on his "lmann" account during this run... He pressed the OFF button on his deck and it immediately fell silent, then he sank back in his chair, lost in thought. She'd been right about him. She was *good*, that went without saying. She probably knew everything about him. Whether that was good or bad he couldn't know, and probably didn't *want* to know. He wasn't ready for that kind of knowledge, not right now. This was going to stay with him for quite some time. He wouldn't be able to log on to Rigel, or to exist as Rai Oyasumi, for a long time. Big deal; he wasn't going to be doing any decking for a long time anyway. There were going to be a lot of changes once Largo found out-- He came to his senses. He still had a job to do. He had to find out if any of the Sysops were still alive, and if so, since he was now apparently the senior officer of the operation by default, he would have to arrange extractions for them. It was very important to at least try and find LaPlante. There were still some secrets of ACI technology that LaPlante had yet to explain to him, if he was still capable of that. Not only that, he had to get a body count: there were probably thousands of very fresh corpses all across the galaxy now. Arrangements would have to be made. And this whole debacle was going to require a lot of explaining to Largo, and R-Type would have to be the one to do it, unless he could track down LaPlante... He got up and unhooked his deck from the transmission lines, packed it in its carrying case and headed out of the office. This part of the job was more suited to GENOM's razormen. He needed to make a couple phone calls... * * * The Cyberbattle of Turing III. One of the least known, but costliest battles in history. Hundreds of people dead, thousands of programs crashed or destroyed. Battia had survived, obviously. Lufy had not, but a lot of the enemy died before they took her out. He'd only kept his skin because he successfully led recovery troops on a dangerous extraction to recover LaPlante, and helped create a new identity for him. As always, he'd made an effort to keep his role as invisible as possible -- which was good, because everyone else involved in the coverup died messily, and that included "Mr. Foreman" himself. (That had, in final analysis, been no great loss.) So what did the WDF think of him? He didn't know, and couldn't know. He could only assume, based on the attitudes he knew, and what had happened to those around him, that they did not think highly of anyone among the GENOM elite. Would they think more highly of him if he quit? Would their opinion of him be affected by the WDF personnel he'd actually come in contact with? And if so, would that have a positive or negative effect? Could he risk quitting to try and impress them? No going back, and if it fell through what would he do then...? But why be so worried about quitting? He did have enough money to last for years, after all, and God knew how many companies would be all too eager to snap him up and acquire his talents for their own use. Acquiring nanotanks and RETRO would not be that diffcult, really. Nobody would pursue him if he deserted, now that the military division was decimated. You would think that, given all this knowledge, it would be easy to break away from the company and put that life of darkness and corruption behind him. But it wasn't that simple. It *wasn't* just a life of darkness and corruption. GENOM had made some truly honorable accomplishments possible. And, well, to be perfectly and truly honest, there was something about the phrase "I work for GENOM" that rang a pleasant bell in his mind. There was something about being a part of what, even now, was still the single most powerful corporate entity in the galaxy. There was something about the title "Chief Biocyberneticist" that rang well, something about all the awards and commendations, about all the legitimate business colleagues, friends he'd made through GENOM, about all the *good* things GENOM did for him, the projects they'd funded, the ideas they'd tried, about all the contributions he made which improved the standing and power of the company, about all the trust GENOM had placed in him... ...trust in the form of a hand in their blackest schemes... but also trust in the sensitive research projects which had earned him awards in the legitimate world... and had made GENOM stronger (was *that* good or bad?)... Damn it. What choice to make? *Could* a choice be made? He got to his feet, perhaps a little too quickly, and walked out of the office, leaving the lights on. Behind him the sun continued to rise, indifferent to such matters as his. He moved into the darkened corridors of the building, for the most part just wandering randomly from place to place, trying to sort out his thoughts, trying to find the right answer to this most difficult question, if there even was one. Oh well, at least he'd figured out what the source of his angst was. Now if he could just find the answer... Although he had no way of knowing it, the answer, as fate would have it, was fast approaching. Daggerdisc, a Corellian Heavy Industries YT-1312 light starfreighter, screamed through hyperspace at 350% of the YT-13xy series' rated maximum hyperdrive speed. On board it were three people, two of whom were sleeping. A light burning in the ship's portside-slung cockpit would identify the presence of the remaining crew member, who was sitting at the pilot's station, reading a text file in the blue glow of the command terminal. "Show me his general information again," said Gryphon to the terminal, and it beeped and obediently scrolled up some information for him. Real name: Lawrence Robert Mann Born: May 29, 1971; Canandaigua, New York (United States, Earth) Current biological age: 34 Height: 6'4" Weight: ~200 lbs. Hair: Dark brown, waist-length Eyes: Kiroshi optics, brown tone (Matches original eye color.) --ED/TRA-- - Computer Science :: B.S., M.B.A., Ph.D., University of California Irvine - Engineering :: B.S., California Institute of Technology - M.B.A., New Caledonia Polytechnic Institute - Biocybernetics :: M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology - M.D. Certification :: [Obtained through GENOM programs & work] - Security Force training - CyberWraith training - Multiple awards and commendations for various achievements in several fields within the corporation [refer to main dossier for specific information] --SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS-- - Designer, Sanjiyan(tm) Biomanipulation Framework - Primary Designer, Trinetra(tm) Nanochine/Nanite System [= Above systems have been integrated into a package known as "Sanjiyan-Trinetra Biotechnology Framework System"] - Designer, Sanjiyan-Trinetra Autonomic Cybernetic Intelligence Standard (STACIS). Latest version 2.2, released January 2295. [= System is rumored capable of running multiple CI personas on a single driver and generating Spenglers. Rumors notwithstanding, it is one of the most sophisticated protocols in the galaxy. -E] [= Noteworthy CIs include: "Battia" : Majordomo ACI of GENOM's core mainframe "Lufy" : Halstead Combat ACI (terminated 2270 A.D.) "Catty" : Intelligence ACI [current position unknown]] - Designer, Mann Systems 101, 505, and 1001-series BioSculpt(tm) Tanks - Designer, Victory-class Star Destroyer - Co-designer, Imperial-class Star Destroyer - Co-designer, GENOM 33/S Replicant series and related designs - Co-designer, Sanjiyan RETRO(tm) Life-Extension System -- ADDITIONAL DATA (Caution: Classified; Verify clearance)-- - Co-designer, ICZER Project : Holds all rights to program design - Involved in AST/Tyrell Buyouts in 2020 - Involved in Turing III Cyberbattle, 2270, and subsequent Foreman Coverup - Involved in Gotterdammerung Project, 2287-2288 = Listed as Primary Designer for "Experiment 101-E" - Personal aide to Largo, 2326-2336 - Co-designer, AT&T Project, 2382-2388 - Technical designs are very prevalent in GENOM's armada; design paradigm of Victory and Imperial-class Star Destroyers used for Dreadnaught and Interdictor-type vessels as well (in fact, you could say that Dr. Mann is responsible for the entire 'motif', as it were, of the GENOM Military Arm. V-) --SOME LIFE EVENTS-- 1985 - Parental divorce; both sides remarried, most family contact lost 1989 - Graduated Yucaipa High School (Yucaipa, California). Multiple awards for drama club participation. Enrolled at UC Irvine. 1991 - Nearly disqualified from UCI due to poor performance (read: very bad math skills). Visited by a GENOM representative that year; performance inexplicably skyrocketed afterwards. 1993 - Graduated UCI /w/ honors. Immediately hired by GENOM as a high-level CompSci consultant. Began working on Sanjiyan and Trinetra systemry shortly afterward. 199x - Hired by AST Research after GENOM's collapse post-Neo-Worcester 2020 - Returned to GENOM following the AST/Tyrell buyouts. (Had already been involved with GENOM a couple years prior.) 2023- 2034- Tokyo residency. Instrumental in hostile takeover of Mishima Industries, Japan's largest industrial company 2051 - RETRO(tm) created and used successfully "Right, right. Skip ahead, anything interesting... you know what I want to see." 2220- 2226- New America Colony residency. Consolidated 95% of the colony's infrastructure under GENOM control. Colony living standard improved dramatically as a result. "Interesting. What else?" [2289 - Attempted suicide following the successful execution of ] [ Gotterdammerung. Attempt failed. No additional attempts ] [ ever made; evidently he straightened himself out. ] 2330- 2336- New Japan residence. Assisted in regaining control of GENOM New Japan, whose performance was considered far too low in Largo's eyes "Veeeeeeeery eeeeenteresteeeng. Especially the timing." 2375- Present- Irvine residence. "Hmm. Dry. Technical... Eve, Vision, give me your own impressions." "He's one of the reasons GENOM has been so successful in the legit corporate world," Vision said, appearing on the VDT. "That much is obvious. He also helped some of their key Black ops to succeed. He's hard to pin down because his operating style is very subtle and background-oriented -- not that I can blame him for that. That tends to make him sort of the "unknown hero" of the company when it comes to the darker ops. "That aside," said Eve as she subdivided the screen diagonally and took the lower half, "he -is- highly recognized for all the major inventions which made GENOM what it is today. He's very well-connected in the corporate world, and commands a lot of respect as a businessman. Also, I've dealt with him personally from time to time. I feel it necessary to point out that, considering all the cybernetics and actions he has been forced to submit to, he has retained his humanity rather well. Sheer force of will, so it would seem. "Personality-wise, he's something of a walking double-standard." "Makes sense. He's a Gemini," Vision pointed out. "Usually," Eve continued, "he tends to be easygoing and more a follower than a leader. Reports have indicated that he -is- capable of assuming complete control and becoming a very exacting leader when the situation dictates -- Yuri can provide an eyewitness account of that, if you'll recall. By nature he is independent, and more into observation than control, which often conflicts with his loyalty to his friends and comrades. He's been treading a line between the two (individualist and follower) for most of his career, and maintained his balance quite admirably, I think." Gryphon leaned back and absorbed. "Summary?" "Dr. Lawrence Mann is a good man caught on the wrong side of the tracks," Eve announced, inequivocally. "He's played the game out of necessity. And I don't believe his innermost values have ever been compromised, amazingly." "I concur," Vision said, nodding. "I don't have the same extent of contact experience with the man that Eve does, but I've seen enough of his record to agree." She grinned. "Let's bag him." Gryphon grinned in return. "Let's indeed. Thanks for your help, Eve; as soon as we drop back out of hyperspace you can head back." "It never hurts to help." "No, indeed, it doesn't... " EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT #INCLUDE (PROVING GROUNDS, PART ONE) Benjamin D. Hutchins Lawrence R. Mann (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited 24 APRIL 2389 IRVINE, CA, EARTH R-Type sat at his terminal and just stared at the screen for a while, willing himself to get it in gear and start typing. If he was going to request a corporate transfer to the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards liaison detachment, now was the time to do it, while everyone was moving round and there were still openings. (And while he had no large projects pressing here in Irvine.) He hesitated. How should he word this? The new Master of GENOM was not a man he was familiar with, and although he was reputed to be fair, reputations meant little. (Maximilien Largo had been reputed, to the general public, to be a marvelous philanthropist in _many_ of his guises throughout his history, including, Brian J. Mason, Masada Quincy, and Bill Gates.) His train of thought, already unstable, was derailed completely by the chimer to his office door. "Come in," he said in an exasperated tone of voice, turning to face the doorway. "Look, I left instructions that I was NOT to be--" He stopped dead when he realized who was standing in the door. The man in his doorway was human and on the short side, no more than five foot eight. He was stockily built, but Larry couldn't really tell much about his build thanks to his clothing. He was dressed completely wrong for GENOM's Irvine headquarters, and for a brief instant, until his mind registered _who_ it was, R-Type found himself wondering how this man had gotten in here in those rumpled blue jeans, well-worn Doc Martens, blue and white striped button shirt (unbuttoned to partially reveal what looked to be a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt), and wrinkled grey duster, let alone with that grey fedora perched on his head. Then other details of his dress registered. The rowelless spurs on his Docs, for example, and his octagonal, wire-framed glasses, behind which ice-blue eyes sparkled. His bearded face was smiling a small, almost private smile. The WDF commbadge on his duster's lapel glittered. Small Maltese crosses did the same on the epaulets. What in hell was HE doing HERE? R-Type found his voice. "Gh--um--can I help you with something?" The man in the doorway spoke, and his voice was surprisingly deep. "You're Dr. Lawrence Mann, also known as R-Type?" "That's me." Gryphon stepped into the room and extended a hand. "Gryphon, Wedge Defense Force." "To what do I owe this honor, Admiral?" Gryphon looked pained. "Please. Any friend of Yuri's deserves to call me Gryphon." He changed the subject without padding, his mind simply switching gears in mid-speak. "I'm in the system to pick up a bit of real estate, and while I'm in the area, I'm fulfilling a function as Chief Engineer of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards." "Um...which is?" "I'm scouting for talent, to put it bluntly. My own design team and several others need engineers, Virtual Labs is looking for programmers, and Robotics Division is looking for a few good cyberneticists. According to the dossier Master Caine supplied me with on you, you're all three." "What...what made you think of me, specifically?" "I told you, you're a friend of Yuri's. When she found out I was coming out this way and doing a bit of scouting, she mentioned you. Well, more than mentioned you. 'Cornered me in a conference room and exposited for half an hour or so' would be more accurate, if we were being pedantic." He grinned. "Eve threw in her two cents' worth too. You're a very popular man among the women in my life, Dr. Mann." R-Type looked sheepish. "Anyway, I'm empowered to offer you any of a number of things. A position on one of the many engineering teams currently active at UPNS; a senior consultant's position at Virtual Labs, under ReRob; a slot on the Life Sciences Division's biocybe research group; senior research engineer with Robotics; GENOM liaison attachment to any of the above if you don't want to give up your GENOM corporate position, which, given your seniority, I wouldn't blame you for." He looked at his watch. "Problem is, I have to be elsewhere in a little less than an hour, so if you don't give me an answer now, you'll have to wait a bit before we can process the forms." That grin again. R-Type was stunned. This was the kind of thing he had been, moments before, wrestling with mentally. Eris was definitely watching. "Uhm..." What the hell to say? "Sure, why not?" That wasn't it--d'oh! Let's be flippant, shall we? Surprisingly, Gryphon laughed. "Nice attitude." He took a digital assistant out of his inner coat pocket and flipped the standby switch on the side of it to the ON position. "Vision, luv, you in there?" "Of course," a woman's pretty voice replied (from where he was, R-Type couldn't see the screen). "Where else would I be, darling?" Gryphon was, apparently, quite used to this sort of treatment, and R-Type found himself suddenly, wistfully, wishing that Jilehr would be a little more like that. Then he bonked himself in the head. "Dr. Mann has, happily, chosen to join the Rebel Alliance," said Gryphon to his digital assistant. "Would you be a dear and cheat up the paperwork for us?" "I already did." Gryphon raised an eyebrow. "What, you thought he'd say no? Get real." "Um...excuse me," said Larry. "Mm?" said Gryphon, looking over the screen and cocking the _other_ eyebrow. "Could I...look at that for a second?" Gryphon indicated his digital assistant. "What, this?" Larry nodded. "Sure, knock yourself out." He handed the device to R-Type. The miniature holotechnic flatscreen had a finely resolved image of a very pretty woman, a woman he recognized almost immediately, on it. "Vision?" he said. "The same," Vision replied with a fetching wink. "Check it out, boss, he recognized me. I may not be as famous as my sister, but I get around." "I think he's thinking of other Vision, honey." "Oh." The image on the screen pouted. "That's no fun." "Uh...who is this?" asked R-Type. "This? Your guess was right, kind of. This is VISION-1, my cybernetic right arm, my trusted advisor and confidante--" "Your other half, soulmate, and electronic snugglebunny," Vision interrupted. Gryphon half-snarfed. "Yeah, yeah. Next you'll be telling people you're the second coming of HAL." "Oh," said Vision with a seductive look and an almost comical, Jessica Rabbit breathiness in her voice, "but I am, Dave. And I can do so much MORE for you than the old me could, Dave. I'll open the pod bay doors for you, Dave. I'll--" "That'll be enough out of you, Lieutenant Commander." R-Type was laughing so hard he almost dropped the digital assistant. "Now look what you did, Vision--you broke him!" "It's not my fault," she replied. "YOU brought it up." Gryphon sighed, rolling his eyes. R-Type, recovering, said to the screen, "You're an ACI?" "You bet." "What protocol?" "I don't tell people that on the first date." R-Type snickered, but kept himself under control this time. He handed the digital assistant back to Gryphon. "Amazing. Did you write her?" "In a manner of speaking." Gryphon turned his gaze to the screen. "Gotta put you back now, luv." R-Type could only imagine what Vision was doing with her video image as her voice, slowed down by about 40%, slurred, "Dddddaaaaaiiiissssssyyyyy... Dddddaaaaaaiiiiisssssyyyyy... " Gryphon turned the assistant back to standby mode and stowed it in his coat. "Listen, I've gotta buzz...do you want to stay here and arrange your own transport, or would you rather do the adventurous thing, grab whatever you can't possibly live without for the next ten or so hours and come with me? I'll arrange for your other things to be shipped after us." [I have to stay near that ACI.] R-Type shut off his terminal, picked up his briefcase, coat, and hat, and said, "Let's go!" "Adventurous. I like that. Okay...you have a car?" Gryphon asked as they walked through the building's corridors, toward the elevator. "Yup." "Want to bring it along?" "That'd be excellent, if I can." "Great." They got in the elevator and rode down to the parking garage. "I hope it's got enough space for a mini-fridge." "You brought a mini-fridge with you?" "No." Gryphon stopped next to a techno-looking motorcycle and pushed a button on the cowling; with a nifty sound effect, it folded up into a box about the size of a mini-fridge. "But it's a useful size comparison." He grabbed the handle on top of the box and picked it up. "Sure, I think it'll fit in back." On their way to the airport, R-Type tapped a few keys on the keypad next to his carphone, and the small display screen in the center of the dash activated: AJ-2 ACTIVE, AT 100% OPERATING STATUS. PERSONA 'AKI' ONLINE... Then the upper 3/4 of the screen was replaced by an image of a pretty brown-haired woman with eyeglasses, in a white blouse. "Afternoon, R- Type... what are you doing out at this hour??" "Aki, I want you to transfer all your object files and code to the car's mainframe. Please do it now." Before she answered, Gryphon saw the image change: the face and hair were the same, but the eyeglasses disappeared, replaced by a black headband, and the white dress became a black cloak. And with a slightly harsher voice, she spoke: "Excuse me??" Gryphon looked vaguely curious at this sequence of events; he'd never seen a CI behave quite like this. But wasn't one to pry; he figured things would explain themselves shortly. "You heard me, Jilehr," R-Type went on. "Download yourself to the car. I'll explain afterwards." The first image reappeared: "Beginning file transfer, 9600 megabaud..." Below, the text portion of the screen rattled off a list of files and a percentage-complete readout. After about 60 seconds, Aki announced "Transfer complete." "Now what in Hades is going on?" the second image reappeared and demanded. "We're moving to Utopia Planitia, Jilehr. Effective immediately." "Ex-cuse- me???" "Oh, cut it out. You heard me." Aki: "Have you been transferred?" R-Type grinned. "Well, sort of. But I'm being rude." He indicated the man sitting next to him. "Aki, introduce yourself to Admiral Hutchins." Aki's image turned and said "How do y--", then reacted with surprise. "Hutchins? As in Admiral *Benjamin* Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force???" Gryphon waved and said, "Yeah, that'd be me." He looked a wee bit discomfited at her tone, and smiled almost shyly. Aki was momentarily speechless, then Jilehr took over again, turning to R-Type: "Now hold on a minute: I distinctly recall that you were still no-proposal. No-hint-of-a-proposal, to be exact. Now you're moving?!" "Sure looks that way," R-Type replied. Aki: "But... but that would mean only five hours passed!" Jilehr: "How in hell could they have read the letter, made a decision, and responded so fast, even *with* subether??" "Ummm..." R-Type looked skyward; how should he word this? But Gryphon saved him the trouble: "Actually," he said with quiet amusement. "'They' just happened to be in the neighborhood, and had a recommendation ..." "I beg your pardon?" Aki asked, still confused. "I happened to be in the solar system, and I knew R-Type was interested in moving Wedgeward ... so I popped in to see if he was interested in living dangerously for a week or two." Aki blinked. Gryphon blinked back. "Oh BTW, Gryphon," R-Type interjected. "I'd like to introduce you to *my* personal aide, Mann Systems Multipersona ACI #AJ-2, STACIS version 2.2. Right now her name is Aki. She seems to have forgotten to introduce herself." Aki blushed. She had indeed forgotten. "Very pleased to meet you, Admiral Hutchins," she said, a hint of embarassment in her voice. Gryphon grinned. "The pleasure is all mine." [So this is a STACIS CI,] he added to himself. [Very sophisticated... better than LAPCIS.] Jilehr surfaced once again: "Hey there! I'm Jilehr!" She didn't bother with formalities, just cut to the chase: "So obviously you just moved RT out of Irvine. How'd you manage that?" "Jilehr! Be nice!" R-Type admonished her. To Gryphon: "Oh, and this is Aki's other personality, Jilehr. She's a bitch." "Oh I love you too, R-Type," she glared back at him. "Oh, I don't think I really had all that much to do with it," Gryphon grinned. "I think more credit belongs to the contacts he already _has_ in the WDF." [So it's true... STACIS *can* run multiple personas on one driver.] Aki looked confused, then Jilehr let out a grin. "Why R-Type you sly devil..." Very seductive tone in that voice. R-Type rolled his eyes. Gryphon snickered. "She's not normally this bad," R-Type asided to Gryphon. "Cute, Jilehr. What I want to do right now is talk to Aki. Can I talk to Aki?" "There is no Aki. There is only Zuul." "Jilehr!" Then he caught himself; getting angry might be a bad idea right now. [So the question is,] Gryphon said to himself. [Did he deliberately design a CI to piss him off, or is it an accident? Hmmm... that would indicate creative synthesis... maybe even heuristic generation.] Fortunately Aki did come back. "Thank you, Aki," R-Type said. "You're welcome," she replied. "They'll be moving my stuff out of the apartment in, uh... how *is* my stuff getting moved to UPNS, anyway?" Gryphon looked at his watch. "Federated Express should be descending on the place right... about... now." Aki appeared to notice something offscreen. "Some people from Federated Express are attempting to gain access to the apartment." R-Type glanced at Gryphon: "Whoa, nice timing!" To Aki: "Let 'em in. Supervise and make sure everything is secure, and have them dismantle the computer last." "Will do." "Unreal..." Jilehr added. "Friends in low places," Gryphon said with a grin. "FedEx got me out of a couple of jams during the Exile." [Exile?] R-Type thought. There was a term he'd never heard before. He was about to ask about when Jilehr piped in again: "Now hold on here, I still don't quite get this." This seemed to be directed at both of them. "You're telling me that in less than five hours you put through a transfer request, got *all* the paperwork filled out, got *in touch* with *movers*, and all without telling me??? How in HELL did you do that??" R-Type glanced at Gryphon. "Uh, I had a little help." Gryphon looked angelic. "Hanh?" Aki: "Um, pardon me Admiral Hutchins, but I am curious. How *did* you manage to do that?" "Oh, I didn't do it myself. I don't have the attention span." He delved into his coat and produced his digital assistant, flipping the switch. "Vision... wakey wakey... your public is calling." "Beg pardon?" "R-Type and his assistant wish to know how we processed the paperwork in less than five hours." "His what?" Vision said. "Gryph, we don't have the in-flight resources for more than one passenger. You didn't pack for this." "Uh, no Vision," R-Type said. "My assistant's an ACI. Aki, would you introduce yourself to this lovely lady?" Gryphon turned his PDA around so that it faced the dash, and Aki spoke. "Hello, I'm Aki. Mann Systems ACI number AJ-2. I'm R-Type's primary aide." "Virtual Intelligence System with Interfaced Option Notation," Vision replied. "Call me Vision. I'm Gryphon's mistress." Gryphon looked at the Oldsmobile's ceiling, and R-Type snarfed. Aki's eyes widened in the instant before her image switched: "'Mistress??' Did I hear that, RT?" Jilehr said. "Guess so," R-Type shrugged. Gryphon seemed to have taken quite an interest in the pattern of dots punched for ventilation into the fabric lining the car's ceiling. "Did I just miss something?" Vision asked. "Oh, sorry Vision," R-Type said. "This is Aki's other personality, Jilehr." He had a sudden feeling in the back of his head that these two were going to be the best of friends... NOT. "Oh, uh... hi." Vision looked vaguely confused. Did this... other personality... have some kind of problem? "Uh, chief, is it my imagination, or am I getting attitude here?" Somewhere in R-Type's consciousness an alarm sounded. This was leading in a direction he didn't think he was going to like. "Look not at me, m'lovely. You're the one who had to go and advertise." Jilehr glanced at R-Type: "Well *this* is certainly a new take on 'pocket pool', wouldn't you agree?" The alarm got louder. [Oh shit...] R-Type thought. Well, he could always shut her off if she became a pain, he figured. Gryphon snickered at her comment, but Vision didn't seem to find it amusing: "You have some problem with human/CI relationships? Shows a lack of bandwidth on your part, doesn't it? What's it matter? Love is love." Jilehr snorted: "Definitely gives new meaning to--" "Whatever you're going to say, Jilehr, don't," R-Type cut in. He definitely didn't like where this was going, and he wasn't in the mood to referee a fight between two secretaries. "Give me Aki, *now*." The image reverted. To Vision: "Now, we *do* want to know how you process paperwork so fast." Vision had by this time grasped the idea of AJ-2 having two separate personalities with the same face, and replied. "Oh, it was simple. I have a formbuster utility I kludged up in my spare time. It doesn't really take any cycle time at all to crunch standard forms." "I always need 2 to 3 cycles to process most paperwork," Aki said. "And that's with an assist from Jilehr. You must have several personalities running in order to process so quickly." "Personalities?" Vision queried. "You mean, different icons, response parameters, the whole nine yards?" Aki nodded. "Nope, it's just little old me. There's only one mind in this head, honey. Guess it's just the way I'm wired." "*One* personality?" Jilehr turned to R-Type, jerking a thumb in Vision's general direction. "She isn't too sophisticated, is she?" "You must have me mixed up with somebody who cares what her code looks like, babe. I only care about results." She paused, looking introspective. "Hmm, come to think of it, I'm not sure I even have code..." [Huh?] R-Type thought, too busy parsing this comment to prevent the next one: "Doesn't even know where her code is. Phaugh," Jilehr snorted, then looked up at Gryphon. "Does she play good nine-ball?" Gryphon opened his mouth to respond, but Vision cut him off with, "Look, you schizophrenic wonder, what'd I do to you, huh? I'm trying not to get pissed off here, but you're making it real work." R-Type decided that it was time to put a stop to this. "All right, ladies. No catfights, if you please." "Don't look at me, chum," Vision shot back. "Your cybernetic insanity started it; I was trying to be friendly, but noooOOOooo, she has to start insulting me." "Oh, go find your code," Jilehr snapped, not one to not have the last word. "It shouldn't be too hard to find in that little pocket pooltable." Vision could take no more, and burst out: "Look, you little bitch -- you wanna take me on? You push me that far and it'll be the last error you ever log. I'll crash you so hard your TAPE BACKUPS will be corrupted. Am I getting my meaning across?!" "I'd like to see you try it from there, you single-brained sex toy!" "Oooh, you're gonna *regret* that..." [Ohh... *gawd*...] R-Type dragged a hand across his face in embarassment. "All RIGHT, Jilehr! That's ENOUGH! I've got enough bad impressions-- wha?!" He stopped in mid-sentence when he realized the carphone had just activated, apparently on its own, and emitted a carrier signal. Then the speaker cut out. An instant later, every single light and readout on the car flared bright red and alarms went off. "What the FUCK?!" R-Type was suddenly thankful that he'd had the car in manual mode all this time. Something had gone horribly wrong with the computer. Reflexively he swerved out of the air-traffic path and slewed toward the side of the street. If the computer died... "Oh dear," Gryphon muttered. "Do excuse me." So saying, he connected himself to the PDA and thumbed the green button on the front of the keypad. [What the hell's going on?!] R-Type thought. Then suddenly the image on the monitor distorted wildly and went to static, and a frightened scream could be heard. "Aki?!" R-Type shouted. "AKI!" He almost forgot that he was in a moving car and nearly rammed into a tree, scaring the hell out of the pedestrians on the sidewalk. He slewed the car around again and set it down on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Fuck the keep-off regulations. Then the monitor righted itself again, and on it could be seen Vision's face: "Well, that was easier than I expected. You call this security?" R-Type felt his blood pressure increasing rapidly, and something violent was about to come out of his mouth, when he noticed that Gryphon seemed to be "behind" her, taking her arm. "Vision, cut that out," he said. "Let's go, you've made your point..." Fschhhttt... the screen went black. The car alarms fell silent and the dash lights and gauges resumed their normal operations. Gryphon jacked out of his PDA and noticed where the car had ended up. He also noted that R-Type had his eyes fixed on the dash monitor, which was still black. His face was level, but Gryphon could tell his breathing was rapid, and he was heard to mutter "Come on, Aki... come on..." "Er, sorry about that," Gryphon fumbled. "Vision's a little, er... sensitive." Finally the screen reported that Aki was back online ( R-Type sighed.), and her image rezzed onto the screen, a very terrified look on her face. "Was... was that... *necessary*???" she stammered. "I think so," Vision replied, completely serious. "Your other half has to learn something about taunting the unknown." R-Type turned to Gryphon and spoke in a level but rushed voice; he was clearly not happy at all. "How did she do that?" Gryphon looked summarily embarassed about the whole business, in a vaguely dignified way. Vision ignored R-Type and continued: "Let me make it crystal clear to you, whoeveryouare. I am not a glorified sex toy. I wasn't designed for it, and I certainly wasn't incepted for it. I'm not a plaything; I'm his lover. I _decided_ to do this. Just as if I were Human. I don't want to hear any more static, understand?" "Vision, that's enough. You've made your point." "Stay out of this," she retorted. "It's none of your business." Jilehr popped onto the screen again, looking rather harried: "You... you got lucky, bitch, next ti--GHAK!!" and she abruptly disappeared. A text message read "PERSONA 'JILEHR' LOCKED...", and Aki reappeared, looking as though she were going to start crying at any instant. Gryphon noted that R-Type's finger was resting on the ENTER key of a keypad. Obviously he'd shut Jilehr down. He looked thoroughly pissed. Then he spoke in a carefully modulated but clearly quite pissed voice. "Aki, you will maintain that lock until further notice. I do not want, or need, any more bullshit. Do I make myself clear? Good, now go to autopilot, and get us to John Wayne. Now." (Gryphon was beginning to understand what Yuri meant by "persuasive", when talking about him.) Aki nodded and disappeared, her image replaced by text which indicated that the autopilot had been activated, and also warned that the entire system would be operating at about 60% of normal efficiency with the controlling ACI partially disabled. R-Type fell back in his seat and put a hand over his eyes as, by itself, the car lifted back into the air and maneuvered into traffic again. "We'll talk about this later, Vision," Gryphon said as the car began to move, and shut off the PDA without waiting for a reply. There was an embarassed silence for a moment or two, which Gryphon finally broke: "Well, that went well. I'm very sorry about that." R-Type didn't appear to hear. He still had a hand over his eyes and seemed to be muttering to himself. "Just wonderful... Try to make a good first impression and what happens? Fuck..." "I'm... ah... sorry," Gryphon repeated. "Vision's very proud of her status with me. She gets very upset if anyone suggests that I think less of her than if she were human... as you no doubt noticed." (He finished this in a tone of voice that said 'what I just said was unnecessary, but I had already begun saying it.') R-Type seemed to be somewhere between wary and impressed, and it occurred to Gryphon that he'd forgotten to answer R-Type's earlier question. "I, uh... I guess I should explain what just happened, eh?" "I'd appreciate that," R-Type spoke in a tone which said 'your ACI just broke into my computer and tried to kill my ACI; you're damn right you're gonna explain'. "That was unlike anything I've ever seen... she hacked into my system like it was *paper*..." "Uh, well... to her, it is. How can I explain this ... most programs are like people who live in cyberspace, mm?" "Yeah..." Gryphon paused, not knowing quite how to go on. "Vision... isn't a program, in the conventional sense... hm... have you ever heard of CLULESS?" "I've *heard* of it..." R-Type ventured. "But the history books I've seen are sketchy about the subject. They called it 'the most powerful ACI platform ever written', and that was it." "Ah. Well, it's... it's a cyberspace... -force-. That's the only way to describe it. It's a pattern of logic so complex the human mind can't even begin to understand it... like the Autobot Matrix, sort of, if you've heard of that. It can do... incredible things." He paused. "And I have the only existing copy. It's sitting in the wetdrive in the back of my skull right now, happily occupying all twenty-six gigs." "Twenty-six *gigs*? That's a big Twinkie..." R-Type remarked. "CLULESS acts kind of like a programming language," Gryphon went on. "But it lives up to its name: it's 100% conceptual. If you think you know what you're doing you're doomed from the start. It's the image in your head of the finished product that's important, not the code you're feeding it... you could type in garbage if you had a clear image. And the sharper the image the better the creation... until, when you get to the highest levels of concept and the lowest of technicality, you get... you get life. Real life. The CPU cluster where Vision lives shows a Spengler flux of 3.39... and this is about as clear as the Crab Nebula, isn't it?" "*3.39*?" R-Type said in response to what had made the most sense to him. The Spengler flux was a measure of life force, theorized by Dr. Egon Spengler centuries before. Humans were the base for the scale, and so had an average flux rating of 1.0. Something three times more powerful... "Yes," Gryphon continued, hoping he wasn't losing Larry completely. "CLULESS constructs are unusual. Vision doesn't have locatable object files... she can move around at will. Cyberspace seems to almost bend around her, like space near super-high-mass objects. I won't pretend I understand it... maybe it would help if you knew where she came from." R-Type nodded, putting as much energy into parsing this as he could, trying to decipher it all. He was thankful for the car's autopilot, so he could give this his undivided attention. And for once, he was glad for the gridlock in the area; this sounded like it was going to be a long story. "During the Exile -- you probably know it as the Interregnum, or maybe the Period of Chaos -- I spent some time on New Japan. Obviously you're familiar with the original Vision, the human woman who was a singer in the thirties?" "Yes, Reika Chang. I went to a few of her concerts." "During the peak of her career, Reika and I were... very close. If you look carefully, you may see some resemblance between me and the Revengers' lead guitarist." R-Type pulled an image from his own wetdrive and looked closely at Gryphon... "Well I'll be damned..." he said. "I doubt it. Hell has new admissions standards since I sent Largo... but I digress." (R-Type was about to say "since *you* sent...?" but decided to shelve it. Later, when it mattered...) "Anyway..." Gryphon continued. "Reika and I were very much in love. In fact, we were married for a year or so." Gryphon looked downcast; apparently the next part wasn't quite as rosy. Which, considering the time period, wasn't a great surprise. "Remember in '35, when 'Don Griffin' left the Revengers and they took a year hiatus? There was a reason for that. That was the year Largo gave up administrative control of GENOM New Japan to Kwai-Chang Caine and moved to Earth. I followed him... it was my mission. Nothing mattered except Largo, Largo, always Largo. Reika said she understood, so I suppose that makes what I did a litle less reprehensible, but the fact remains, I abandoned her for the sake of my mission. I left New Japan, and I left her behind." He stopped again, as if he was gathering himself. "Anyway... "A couple of months later I ended up on Kane's World, way the hell out in the boonies. You probably haven't heard of it." (R-Type shook his head.) "I got careless, sloppy... maybe I was tired, maybe I was sick over what I did... maybe I wanted her to catch me. Anyway, I got caught, but it was by a bunch of bounty hunter types, looking to cash in on the GENOM price on my head." "Oh yes..." R-Type snorted in disgust. GENOM had, in attempt to look like the Fine Upstanding Corporation it wasn't, put a 5-million- credit bounty on the head of the 'vicious and terrible Butcher of Musashi'. Really cute. Gryphon went on: "They whacked me up with bondrugs -- tranq chemicals designed specifically to interfere with Detian regeneration. They thought they'd keep me out cold until their GENOM contact could pick me up... but they didn't know just how profoundly Omega-2 had boosted my constitution. I woke up groggy, sick, tripping my ass off basically... but I was conscious. I think -- my recollection is VERY hazy -- that I killed their guard, and I know I stole his computer... a Kiroshama lap-frame, nice machine. I went out into the city without the faintest clue who I was or what I was doing, the shit beaten out of me, filthy, half-dressed, no shoes, in winter, with an expensive- looking lapframe. Not real smart. "I had this brilliant idea that They were after me, and apparently I hid in a dumpster somewhere in New Gotham, in the freezing cold. To hear it told, I jacked into the lapframe. Why I have no clue." He was starting to pick up speed, as if the narrative itself was gathering momentum toward some kind of conclusion, and he was powerless to slow it. "CLULESS unpacked itself from my wetdrive, I don't know how or why, probably some subconscious action on my part... it latched onto the only coherent thing in my entire mind at the time: 'Where are my friends? They can save me, where are they, where is she, where is Reika... Vision, where is Vision, where where..." He paused. "And there she was." "Just..." R-Type said, mildly surprised. "Just like that?!" Gryphon nodded. The first thing she did was crack my own cortex and shut down my body, let it go into the healing coma it needed to flush the drugs; my will wasn't permitting it to do that in my rush to Get Away. The second thing was to break the Kane's World defense net and order one of the GENOM Solsats in orbit to commit a 'firing test error' on the place where the bounty hunters had headquartered... then she falsified me an identity, made me a cover story, and called me an ambulance. Just like that, like it was the simplest thing in the world." "Incredible..." R-Type said. What else to say, for Eris' sake? "For the last forty years of the Exile," Gryphon went on. "Vision was the only constant... besides the fear, of course. She's very protective of me, very proud of her status with me, and very worried, I think, that I think less of her because she isn't physical. It isn't true, but she half believes it. She's very much in love with me... and she doesn't even _realize_ what she really is in terms of sheer potential. "So you see, CLULESS is far too powerful a tool to leave lying around. I don't even allow myself to use it unless I have the clearest of images... I've only created one other with it in my entire life." It had clicked in R-Type's mind: "Eve..." Gryphon nodded. "Eve was the greatest conscious creative synthesis I've ever experienced. She is, in a very real sense, my first child... and Vision is literally _part of me_ that gained its own identity." He laughed. "Listen to me, I sound like I'm lecturing to a metamechanics class." R-Type just nodded. "I think I understand now. Gods, that kind of power... imagine what could happen if it fell into the wrong hands... Jesus." Gryphon noted that R-Type was doing an extremely good job of concealing the fact that this was scaring him shitless; any other person might not have seen it, but the Exile had taught him to recognize that carefully modulated fear factor. R-Type mumbled one more sentence: "Aki's one of my most powerful ACIs... Vision knocked her down like a rag doll..." "No," Gryphon interjected. "She knocked *Jilehr* down like a rag doll. Aki was unfortunate enough to get caught in it by the nature of STACIS. Vision and I are going to have a little talk about abuses of power later on. Still, I can understand what made her do it. Jilehr suggested that she might be... something less than she is, and it frightened her. Vision doesn't like fear, so she transferred it into anger. Frankly I'm surprised she showed as much patience as she did. Consideration for Aki, most likely." "Aki would have died if anything happened to Jilehr; they share the same object base. Aki *has* object files, unlike Vision." Gryphon sensed R-Type's anger rising again and touched his shoulder. "Larry... relax. Like I said, we'll talk about it later, and she was careful not to do any harm..." R-Type just looked at Gryphon for another moment, then finally relaxed. "Yeah... I guess you're right. I'd like to talk to her, if you wouldn't mind." Gryphon nodded and got his PDA back out, bringing it online. "Can you be civil?" he asked. "...yeah... I guess." Gryphon turned the PDA to face R-Type, and he and Vision looked at each other. Vision could tell R-Type was upset, and after seeing what happened to Aki when she hit Jilehr, she could understand why. "Vision, I want to apologize for my ACI's behavior," R-Type said in his corporate-modulated voice. "I think the impromptu move from my base computer to the car upset Jilehr a little more than I anticipated. I'm sorry." "Yeah, well," Vision replied. "That makes two of us. I shouldn't've pushed Aki around like that... Jilehr just... pushed the wrong buttons." "And she was not the only one who pushed the wrong buttons," R-Type remarked. He was obviously referring to the fact that Vision had made a blatant intrusion into his car's computer. "Don't start with me again -- I didn't --" she started, then caught herself. "Um... yeah, um..." She paused and said: "I'd... rather just forget the whole thing." "Me too," R-Type replied. "Me too. I just hope *Aki* can forget. I'm sorry for what Jilehr did, but I would appreciate if you wouldn't do that again. Please." Apparently that was asking a bit much. "That," Vision replied curtly. "is up to Jilehr. All I can promise is that I won't endanger Aki. She hasn't done anything to me." And then she turned herself off. Gryphon sighed. "Did I mention she has a hard time forgiving?" "So I noticed," R-Type said gravely. "Well, I had to ask. I care a lot about my own children, even if they are insufferable bitches sometimes." Gryphon sighed again, looking momentarily wistful. Perhaps it was his own recent fatherhood, although R-Type wouldn't know about that yet. He had read about the horrible debacle that had preceded it, though, and had wanted to personally strangle whoever had tried to hurt Kei and, through her, Yuri. Gryphon, meanwhile, reflected that he'd probably have to spend the evening in cyberspace, reassuring Vision that what Jilehr has said was nothing but unknowing malice. By this time they had finally gotten to John Wayne Spaceport, and Aki became visible to announce this fact. "Now entering spaceport zone. Do you want manual control?" "Please," R-Type replied, and took control of the car. He turned to Gryphon. "OK, which way?" Gryphon snapped out of his thought train. "Hm? Oh, sorry. I was... thinking. Left, through the maintenance gate. I'm in slip 99- A." "99-A... okay." And he turned the wheel to the left. Gryphon pulled another device out of his jacket, an old Cybergenix communicator, and flipped it open, speaking into it. "Wayne Control, this is CC-91. Request ground vehicle access to slip 99-A." "CC-91, access to 99-A is confirmed. Is departure imminent?" "Ah, that's affirmative, Wayne Control. Estimate ten minutes." "Copy, CC-91. Clear skies." "Thank you, Control. CC-91 out." He flipped the communicator closed. "There, we're clear." The gate swung open, and they had access to the pad. R-Type maneuvered his car through the loading area of John Wayne, making for the landing area where Gryphon said his ship was. R-Type recognized the slip size from its designation number; it was one of the larger shuttlebays, used primarily for astroplanes like the ones the major spacelines used and for cargo shuttles to orbiting capital vessels and luxliners. He guessed Gryphon had a WDF runabout, or maybe just a heavy warpshuttle. He was wrong. "Is that what I think it is?" R-Type asked, pointing through the windshield at the vessel that waited for them. It crouched on three heavy, wheel-less landing legs, a flattened discus with two mandible-like protrudances at the front, a cockpit angled off the left side, heavy gun turrets top and bottom, and a large sensor-suite dish antenna jutting out of the port forequarter. "That depends on what you think it is," Gryphon replied with a smirk. "It's a Corellian YT-1300-series light-stock starfreighter. What the old-timers called the Falcon class." "That's what I thought..." R-Type looked over the grey and nondescript antique, noting the swatches of grease, burn scars, and -- was that rust? -- adorning its drab hull, and said, "You came in that thing?! You're braver than I thought." "Nice," Gryphon replied without breaking mental stride. "Maybe you'd like it back in your office, your suitness." R-Type tried hard not to break as he approached the freighter. About then he noticed the large Roman-style lettering on the port mandible: DAGGERDISC. "Daggerdisc. Nice name," commented R-Type as he maneuvered his car into alignment with the cargo bay's loading arms. The car was drawn into the bay, and R-Type shut the engine off, quietly snickering. "Aki, run diagnostics on all systems including yourself. I'm sure Vision wasn't lying, but I'd just as soon check everything over anyway. No offense," he added to Gryphon. Gryphon shrugged. "It's what I would do." Then he turned to the small screen. "Again, I'm... I'm sorry that had to happen. I'll talk to her about it." Aki nodded silently. She was concealing the fact that she was terrified as best she could. "Shutting down for diagnostics now," she announced. And then the car went silent. Gryphon and R-Type climbed out of the car, and Gryphon went to a small control panel and punched some keys. The air flickered as a forcefield secured the car, and then the hatch closed and sealed with a hiss. "C'mon, this way," Gryphon said, and R-Type followed him into the body of the ship. Gryphon led the way down a corridor,around part of the ship's curvature, past the main ramp and up a tangent through a narrow door. R-Type was surprised to see that there was someone else waiting in the cockpit, in the copilot's seat. The person's back was to the door, but even before she turned around to face the opening door, R- Type had recognized the shoulders and the flaming red hair. Hearing the door, Kei turned her seat around, putting her sneakered feet up on the seat of the chair behind her (R-Type thought it had originally been intended for the astrogator). She was dressed comfortably, in a battered old Salusian Military Institute sweatshirt and a pair of well-worn jeans, and showed very few, if any, signs that she had recently given birth to the child she held, wrapped in a blanket, in her arms. "You must be Dr. Mann," she said, smiling. She looked at Gryphon. "Talked him into it, eh?" "No, it was me," Vision said. Gryphon had slotted the PDA into a slot near the pilot's chair, and she'd appeared on one of the monitors. "He wants to know what makes me go." "Now, Vision, that's rude," Gryphon said, shaking a finger at the monitor, about as serious as your average circus clown. Vision checked a contact lens and stuck her tongue out at him. Kei snickered. R-Type, unsure what to do or say, stood. "Fine, have it your way," said Gryphon to Vision, parking himself in the pilot's chair. "Grab a seat, R-Type; I want to get off this planet as soon as possible." "Got something against Earth?" asked Larry as he sat down in the chair behind Gryphon's. "Oh, no, it's lovely ... if you don't mind the isolationist politics, the red tape, and the greenfreaks who come up to you in the spaceport and tell you it's your Duty to destroy your starship because its, and I quote, 'antiquated systems are polluting our mother world'. I really didn't have the heart to tell the jerk that Daggerdisc's systemry is more advanced than most of the Federation Starfleet's, let alone the clunkers the spacelines use. But I digress into bitterness and tirade." He grinned and started punching buttons. "Besides, the air here is too bloody clean. I'm used to shipboard air, that lovely plastic air." Kei sniffed. "I don't smell plastic." "It's a figure of speech." "You and your figures of speech. It's like listening to a Tamaran." Gryphon swiveled in his chair and pointed a fingertip under her nose, saying, "You, young lady, were the one who decided to hitch this ride. I didn't _make_ you come along." She bit his fingertip and replied, "Wasn't the whole -trip- my idea?" Then, shaking her head, she turned and strapped the child into a security seat which was attached to the astrogator's chair. "Your father," she informed the child smilingly, "is a git." Gryphon made a great show of shaking out his wounded hand before returning to powering up the ship. "You're impossible. Going to poison that kid's mind against me, I swear." "Um... " said R-Type. "Oh, I'm sorry. Where -are- my manners today? Dr. Mann, this is Kei, and our daughter, Kaitlyn." "Oh. Uh, hi." Kei smiled; Kate didn't look terribly impressed, but then, when you were three days old, you probably didn't either. "I hadn't heard." "No one has, yet," Kei replied. "What, was she born on your way here?" asked R-Type, not expecting it to be true. "Exactly. Hang on ..." Gryphon kicked in the gravity compensators, and the freighter lifted away from the tarmac with great alacrity. Gryphon spun it 170 degrees or so, canted the nose up and hit the main thrusters, and the ship was heading skyward. "Give me a course to Titan, will you, Kei?" Gryphon asked as he guided the old freighter out of the atmosphere. "It's up," Kei replied after a second of tinkering with the nav computer. "Thanks." Gryphon locked it in and then opened the impulse throttles all the way. "Next stop, Titan. And then, we can all look forward to a mind-numbingly dull week in beautiful hyperspace..." He grinned. "And then Dr. Mann here gets to see what OUR engineers could do." He was, of course, referring to the Dyson Sphere. R-Type had heard about it, of course, but had never actually seen it. "A week?" he asked. "Yeah ... this is a Corellian ship. It has a Corellian hyperdrive core. The builders upgraded it as far as they could, but it's still a hyperdrive." "Mm, oh well," R-Type shrugged. "Hope you all can put up with me for a week." "Well, it's actually kind of an advantage. It's hard to get a week vacation when you just want to do nothing, but if you can sched a business trip ... 'Sorry, my drive ... it'll take me a week.' 'Oh, okay ... well, see you next Friday then.' Bingo ... instant vacation." R-Type reflected some times over the past 400 years when he could have used such a thing. "You learn a few tricks when you're as busy as I am." Gryphon rolled his eyes. "Why, oh why, did I ever go into starship design?" Then he sighed. "Kei knows. Kei knows everything." "Don't you forget it, Liebchen." R-Type decided to disembark with Gryphon once they reached Port Anderson, the Titanese city closest to wherever it was he was going. Since two of them were going, he had no problems with getting his car back out of the hold and driving them, with directions from Gryphon, out into the countryside. As they went, conversation flowed, and R-Type learned much about this man the galaxy called "the greatest fighter pilot ever born". For one thing, he learned that, although proud of the accolades, Gryphon was also slightly embarrassed by his fame. He was trying to walk the fine line between appreciative and arrogant, and doing, he thought, a half-decent job. All in all, Larry thought, this legendary man seemed eminently ... human. He wasn't an Earthman as much as Larry was, that was for certain, but he was very real, very _there_. He hadn't quite expected that. And when they arrived at their destination, he was like a kid on Christmas. "This is _great_!" he declared, getting out of the car and looking up. "This is perfect!!" "What is it?" R-Type asked, standing up as well. He was looking up at a mountain, a great bare crag of stone that rose up out of the forest they had driven into. R-Type could smell and hear the ocean not far away, and realized the mountain must jut right out into the water, like the white cliffs of Dover. "It's going to be my vacation home," Gryphon said. "I'm gonna plane the top off flat--" He pointed, making a knife motion with one flattened hand, "--and build a mighty fortress up there, a great Welsh castle like the one in Macaulay's book. Down here will be kept the way it is, wild and natural." R-Type nodded. "It'll be beautiful." "I plan to have Christmas gatherings here, when it's finished. Get all the folks together in the Great Hall and put away some serious food, then hang around under the big tree and give each other stuff." He smiled. "I should call it the Yuletide, I suppose, but New England has left its mark on my dialect. I ought to find out what the Irish Celts called it before the missionaries showed up. You know, it's amazing, but the Salusians have a winter festival too. So do the Kilrathi, and the Corellians." "No kidding." "Yep. Well, enough of this ... this place is perfect. Let's get back to Port Anderson so I can buy it before someone else snaps it up." An hour and a half, a good meal in a Port Anderson restaurant, and some astrogation later, they were in hyperspace, heading back for UPNS. SOMEWHERE IN HYPERSPACE NIGHT CYCLE Gryphon walked into the Forward Cargo Hold Node and found Aki, dressed like a mechanic, examining under the "hood" of R-Type's car's icon. (The virtual representation of the car was identical to its realspace counterpart.) It looked as though she was well into the testing stage of the diagnostics, for some 'engine parts' could be seen scattered around the front of the vehicle. He watched her a moment longer before tapping on the door frame with his knuckles. Aki looked up from her work. "Wha? Oh... hello, Admiral Hutchins." "Please," Gryphon said as he walked in. "My name is Gryphon." He looked a bit tired, and more than a bit subdued. "Gryphon..." she repeated. "Can I... help you with something?" "Actually, I thought there might be something I could do for you." Hooph, that was clumsy. Of course, given his current tone of voice, it seemed to him like less of a come-on. Aki was puzzled. "What do you mean?" "Uhm ... I thought you might feel a bit better about what happened if someone explained _why_ it happened ... and since I'm the only one who can do it, well ... " He paused. "I can just go, if you like." "No no, please," she seemed to speed up. "Please, I need to know. I've never felt anything so... *powerful*..." She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. Gryphon sighed. "Well..." He looked around, then said in a neutral tone, "Bed, geometry 500 by 350 by 135, position 300 by 120, template six." A largish bed appeared in the corner of the "cargo hold", and he hopped up on it and patted the edge. "Sit down ... I do my best explaining when I'm comfortable." Aki hesitated. This was very different. She wished R-Type were here. "Don't be afraid of me, Aki," said Gryphon gently. "I'm not going to do anything to you." "I'm sorry," Aki said in a subdued tone. She made her way over to the bed and sat down gingerly on the corner. "It's just..." "Just a little weird?" "Well... yes." Gryphon shrugged. "Beds are useful for far more than just sleeping and bonking, Aki, so don't worry about the props. Get comfortable and I'll do my best to explain ... it's the least I can do for not realizing there could be a problem in time." Aki was seen to blush, but her clothing subroutine shifted as she suspended the diagnostics. Now she was wearing a loose-fitting white blouse and brown slacks. Gryphon looked up at the ceiling and began his narrative the same way he had begun it to R-Type. "Have you ever heard of CLULESS?" "Only what R-Type's history books have said about it," Aki answered. Gryphon nodded and basically repeated his tale as he'd told it to R-Type, ending on the same note: "And there she was." R-Type had, at least, managed a word or two afterwards. Aki seemed to be unable to say anything, and Gryphon could tell by the look in her eyes that she was a little frightened, and unsure. "I know, it seems a bit unreal ... but you have to understand what CLULESS _is_. No mortal being created it ... it's a product of one of the Q, the all-powerful. Everything it touches has the touch of godhead in it, I guess..." "Then that's what I felt..." Aki managed finally to speak. "That power... she could have killed me..." Aki wasn't the cybercombat type. Jilehr was more suited to those things. "Power, power, power..." Gryphon said with an exasperated look on his face. "Is that all that makes a person who they are? I command a ship with enough firepower to sterilize a planet, Aki. Does that make me evil? Vision's problem is that she isn't AWARE of her power. Isn't aware of it and doesn't have as much self- control as one could wish for ... it doesn't make her any less quitayne!" Aki shied away from him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to offend you." Gryphon also looked apologetic. "And I didn't mean to get upset... I'm exhausted. I should have rested before I tried this, but I couldn't leave you hanging... "Look, what I'm trying to say is, Vision can't help being what she is. She just ... _is_. I think it's always bothered her a little bit that she's visually a replica of another woman I once loved, a realspace woman ... I think she's afraid that she means something less to me than she would if she were a realspace woman too. When Jilehr suggested that that might be the case, well ... it terrified her, frankly, the idea that Jilehr might be _right_. The fact that I didn't jump in and start raising holy hell about it didn't help ... I had no idea it worried her so much. So she lashed out... and you got caught in the middle. I just talked to her, you know. She feels terrible. She forgot that she'd have to hurt you to hurt the one who'd cut her so deeply ... when I left her she was busily being totally miserable about it. "She's just a person, like the rest of us. She's quitayne, she's flawed, she makes mistakes. She made one today, and she feels awful about it. Eventually she might even swallow enough of that damn pride of hers to apologize for it. She likes you, Aki." Aki was silent for a moment longer, parsing an internal decision. She swallowed. "I... I suppose I should talk to her, then." "I think she may screw up enough courage to come and see you when she wakes up..." "Wakes up? She shut down?" "No ... she went to sleep. She's had a rotten day... made a new friend, then tried to knock her teeth in... all that emotional trauma... I had to calm her down for the last couple of hours, and then she went to sleep. She's extremely anthropomorphic." "Mm..." Aki said after another thoughtful pause. The idea of a "sleeping" ACI was rather new to her still. "Well then... could I be informed when she... wakes up?" "Sure ... I'll let you know." Gryphon yawned. "You ought to try it ... it's rewarding." Aki canted her head to one side, not really comprehending, then shrugged it off and rezzed back into her work clothes, resuming the diagnostics on the car. Gryphon shrugged and got up, letting the bed vanish. "Suit yourself, but I think you're missing out." He was on his way towards the door when Aki called out: "Oh, and Gryphon?" He paused at the door. "Yes?" "Thank you... for telling me... for telling *us*..." "You're welcome." He looked momentarily troubled. "I only hope your other side doesn't use what she's learned as a lever at some point. Vision will never attack you again, now that she knows how closely you're linked ... and I don't want to have to play junior cyberpsychologist with the kind of frustration it would cause..." [Just what I need,] he thought. [Vision in a fugue rage state. Yugh.] "I don't think she will..." Aki considered. "She knows what hit her. I don't think she'll cross that kind of power again. I don't see her taking that risk." Gryphon looked at the deck for a moment, then said, "Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose. Good night, Aki." And he left. THE NEXT MORNING Gryphon wandered down the corridor in the general direction of the wardroom, a mug of tea in his hand and bags under his eyes. He'd gotten *something* over the past few hours, but it wasn't sleep. His mind was on various things, Vision chief among them. She'd probably be waking up before too long, and he needed to be there to greet her. That and he definitely needed to tell Larry about the conversation he had with Aki, if he could find him. You'd think it wouldn't be hard on a ship of Daggerdisc's size to find somebody, but... Fortunately the problem was gracious enough to solve itself. As Gryphon plodded into the wardroom he was greeted by the sight of R-Type with his feet on the holochess table, sketching Kei, who was leaning against an unidentifiable control panel. "Good ning," he croaked. The two turned and R-Type started to say good morning when he noticed Gryphon's appearance: he looked rather out of sorts, in a gaudily patched bathrobe that made him look a lot like a Funkotroni monk, and the Babs Bunny slippers could not be missed. His hair was nothing short of a nuclear disaster area. "Eesh," R-Type said. "You look like... *something* warmed over. What happened to you?" "Nothing, really. I was up all night, and I didn't sleep very well the night before, or the night before, or... it's catching up with me, is all. I spent all night in cyberspace, talking down high bombs... " "High bom-- oh..." R-Type understood immediately. "Problems in cyberspace?" asked Kei. "Oh ... um ... Vision kind of mugged Larry's cybernetic intelligence yesterday, and I spent most of the night picking up the pieces." "What?!" Gryphon turned to R-Type. "You want to try and explain it, or shall I?" "I'll take a stab at it." "Ok." Gryphon sat down at the chess table and nursed his tea as R-Type started explaining the situation to Kei. "My CI has two personalities, Aki and Jilehr." Kei nodded. "Well, Jilehr sort of... called Vision a sex toy. She was having a bad day, what with suddenly having to move out of my home PC and into my car's 'frame. Next thing I knew, Vision had broken into my car's computer and tried to kill her. When she hit Jilehr she also hit Aki's object files. Scared her shitless." "Ouch," Kei said. "She tried to kill her?" "Um, just a second..." Gryphon raised a hand, and they both turned to look at him. "She wasn't trying to *kill* Jilehr, just crash her, make her shut up. When you jumped on kids who taunted you in grade school, did you want to kill them? Give her a little credit, if you could, please." His piece