Surplus Lounge

[Kent Davis]

(about 30 pages)
(Glossary at the end)



Surplus Lounge


The world could have crawled from a fuming stainless
tank to gasp its first breath.

"Jacking into cyberspace to grab secrets, yeah, but
doing it on drugs is lunatic. You're in there lookin'
around, happy as a clam, and red security spikes are chewing
on your nerves."

Forte, tending bar in Surplus Lounge, thought of
Dodge's words last week, felt the fear; he knew about red
spikes. He set the green tinted glass down, grabbed a
pitted mug, started polishing with a ragged towell. He
figured Dodge might wander in someday with an odd look and a
missing mind.

Ages ago, the long western coast of a nation had been
Calixico; but now it was the Trough. Spliced there into a
gash between rocky hills was Surplus Lounge, two high floors
of night survival, neuroporting, alcohol haze, and street
junk. And now more and more among the minds of this
struggling culture crept Humem, begun as mood control; but
now it was more -- silent, deadly, and growing.
Not far, near the peak of a hill, fading remains of a
sign lay in the brush and the dirt. With old dreams, it now
rusted and rotted away. Standing tall and white, the sign
had once said "Hollywood."

"Tersh been here tonight?" said Kreebo. "Got some biz
with the boy."

Forte jerked his head, peering through stale smoke into
Kreebo's eyes, felt his blood temperature creep down. Cold
crawled along the half of his face and neck that didn't work
right anymore. He used to jack cyberspace, run data; the
reds had been too fast. His spine jerked with a chill.
"Only saw him yesterday Kreebo."

Kreebo felt energy drifting between high walls. Heavy,
waist high hardware racks and higher shelves hung there,
bolted all around. He heard rough scrawls telling old
stories, carved in dark wood with street blades. Monitors,
keyboards, NPs -- nerve pads, thick bundles of fiber-op, and
plastic coated copper wire waited for users to jack in.
Pinned or glued high and low, faded photos, drawings, and a
few odd maps told other tales of social mutation through
cybertime. "Well that's good because I'm not ready for him.
I'll be around."

"Sure Kreebo." Forte got another towell, finished
polishing the mug, picked up a hazy blue shot glass.

Kreebo stared back. "I'll want to use that decay
chamber, day or two; mine's got a cracked window." He
smiled. "Need to convert some, ah, warm evidence into cold
space."

Forte paused, nodded. "Yeah, okay Kreebo, but clean it
good, biowipe." Forte liked him all right, but Kreebo, man
he could be so damn cold.

A voice across the room asked about the weather.

"I'll let you know," someone said, "next time I bring
my radiation meter and acid test kit, ha haaa...."

"Borrow a gas mask while we're at it?" said another.

"Don't forget the biohazard suit, freakboyo."
A few chuckles faded.

Kreebo grinned his "Screw you humans; but hey, it's
cool," look to the room, and pushed through the buzzing
crowd to a rear table. He sat down at one end, setting his
minideck on the old beat-up six leg wooden monster.

He worked on a job quote, retyping nothing. Could have
used the NP headset or tiny neuroport in his bag; he
fingered a tiny socket near the right side base of his neck.
But sometimes he liked the feel of old keyboard clicks under
his fingers.

1] Add teleview, both eyes, human, 25X power.
Impact grade, combat. Vintage BellStar military,
3G or 3K series. Charge, Bolea 4500. Rear
batview sensor available.
2] Trace, find, remove false memories, early
childhood, age 2-5. Four percent error margin.
Seal one safety copy for client. Destroy original
recording chips in witness view. Witness, client
supplied. Charge, B3200. One percent error
margin, B2205 added."

He hit the send key, took a long drink, and pulled up a
plan: stomach upgrades for digesting wild plants in a
foreign jungle. Survinor Outback three stage acid drips and
filters would back up tiny high-speed grinders. Best dark
market mil stuff he could get.

He hailed a waiter for another drink and sat back
looking around. The waiter came, clicking and limping, a
crooked half smile on its worn, dented faceplate. It leaned
forward to Kreebo; he waved a credichip across one of its
blue neon eyes.

"Tha...ank you," it ground out through a SynVoice
module, sounding like a broken food machine in a flooded
tunnel. These limited versions were amusing. This one,
almost busted, but good enough for Surplus. It clicked and
limped away, bumping a table. Seloid-Kermer servos whirred,
grinding worn gears and scarred pull rods further toward
total ruin. Kreebo said adios to an ancient relative.

Forte watched him pay for the drink. Kreebo seemed a
live doll with strong rounded features, trim hair, and a
constant smirk. His colorful clothes could look out of
place here, but not on Kreebo. He was easy to imagine
running around the room at the speed of data, then stopping
cold on a microchip.

Couple tables away some guy stared out the huge front
window that needed cleaning. Guy's eyes were like saucers;
Humem, busy tonight making slaves. Few humans knew much
about it; Kreebo often wondered if humans knew anything at
all. Ninety minutes ago the poor slob was making a joke
about shooting up with a sharp garden hose and industrial
pump. Now he looked freeped up on hard street junk; but
Kreebo knew the difference.

Kreebo pulled a tiny meter out of a side pocket and
walked slowly by the guy's chair. He passed the meter by
the base of his skull, taking a reading, triple flash red.
Had to be, Humem beamcast overdose. Humem, a planet-wide
energy field vibrating close to memories and thought.
Useful, sure, for some, on the other end of the damn
beamcast.

Kreebo faked a rough cough, punched the guy hard in the
spine to get a shock wave going, took another reading.
Insane freaks, he thought. Humem, a modern curse. Human or
not, no one deserves this. He thought of vampires from a
movie, then of memories fed to hungry minds of the trusting
young. And for a time he set his jaw, wondering over the
fate of this man, of everyone. Truth, stranger, or more
cruel, than fiction.

He went back to his table. The guy would sit forever
numb if no one led him down to emergency. From there, maybe
StarBar, a bad, bad place out in the middle of nowhere. It
was three tiny planets around a crappy little sun. Buy
anything if your money was good.

Cameleo came up to Kreebo's table grinning; must have
just done a couple hours on his charging rack. Cameleo had
enough street hardware in his body to build something wild.
One strange puppy. "So Kree', dude, my telephoto eye?"

Kreebo leaned forward, peering deep into Cameleo,
waiting a few seconds, enough time for Cameleo to work out
who he was talking to. "Cameleo! Calm down your last nerve
stim. Couple months. See you then." Kreebo went back to
reading a data sheet.

"Uh, yeah sure, uh, Kreebo." Cameleo turned and walked
away with visions of Kreebo, the walking hair-trigger
halfway pulled. Scary son-of-a....

Kreebo looked up, watched him fade into the smoky
horizon of Surplus. He thought back to his own weird escape
from a fate doing deep space colony MainLab duty -- a lab
slab slave...

Kreebo had crawled up from the dense green of the gully
where the transpod had crashed. Faint signals from far, far
away had been recorded at the exact time of the rupture of
the transpod's belly. The signals were never explained.
Running hard, the armed razerguard had bellowed "HALT!"
Kreebo had stood firm, feet wide and a glare. On his
face, no emotion. From his waist, his fist had shot through
a clear BattleTek face shield to a point three inches behind
the guard's forehead, smashing first his skull, then his
brain. Kreebo's middle knuckles were mil grade 3 pierce
points. Six more guards, six more point A to point B
lessons in fuckyu. And he had walked out of there and
disappeared.

Kreebo went back to the stomach upgrade quote. Lots of
customers in the Trough. Lots of biz.


Kreebo swung the big warfiber bag into the back of a
hover and told the old humming tank the address. Navbeam
guided them to an alley dark and still. He walked to the
end, pushing through a battered steel door into more
darkness, darting shadows, and low echoes of whispers and
hiding.

"I'm here Tersch, Teffen ready?"

"Set the bag down and stand still Kreebo."

He felt the vibe, knew a scanner read his skin to his
soul. My soul, he thought, then he shut it off and got back
to work.

Tersch, limping ahead, led him into a room and left,
locking the heavy gray metal door with a metallic click.
Kreebo pulled out his beam wands and biopacks misting with
cold. He plugged in the main and yanked on a small wall
panel cover. There he adjusted ceiling biospots to better
light for bone, tendon, vein, and skin work.

Seven hours later Greb Teffen had a new hand and part
of a wrist. Kreebo decayed the mangled trimmings with
Teffen and Tersch bearing witness; no one wanted their DNA
prowling the Trough getting into trouble.

"Use it till it aches a little," said Kreebo, "then
back off. Keep doing that 'till you have full use, about
six weeks. Wear the sonic glove at night, three quarters
power or above. You can pop the biofixers any time you
want, but take three a day with a full, and I mean full, two
quarts of distilled water. Go double on the oxyboost."

Kreebo called a hover on his wristcomm and went home.
He gulped down two raw steaks and a special cup of stinking
minerals. He lay down to sleep for a couple hours after
jacking his neck port. He dreamed of sailing narrow
stainless tanks in thick gel seas through distant valleys of
crimson rock lit by setting black suns.



"I've seen `em Forte, I've heard the calls, mind
echoes. The AIs, out there, waiting, and...."

Dodge slumped on a chipped hardwood stool in Surplus
Lounge draped in his leather coat, long and black. He
dropped a coin on its edge on the bar. Clear layers of
scarred multipoxy covered the bar's dark hardwood. Drifting
in the skylight above was a gray haze.

Dodge looked up. "See Forte, nice photonic nonevent."
He imagined the little pinging coin sound rippling out
to everywhere. Then he thought of hopping out to some far
place and recording it, then coming back and playing it
again. Now once more zooming out to record the played
recording. Ten more minutes and coins faded and dizziness
swayed him, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled in
tight to the bar, curling cold fingers around its rim.

Maybe he'll make it, thought Forte, maybe just growing
in his own strange way. Dodge, always the genius. Forte
thought about the future, his worn face dreamy. From his
pocket he pulled a shiny durafiber card and read it,
fingering the rough worn edges.

And line by lingering line
The code became aware
No longer artificial
Cold intelligence so rare

Born in layered silicon
And copper transitways
Reaching now for burning stars
And distant hideaways

For some time it had sounded more and more like an
enemy war prayer. "Y'know Dodge, some things start out
sounding so damn good...."

"Sure they do Forte. Real good. `Till the blade rips
your heart." His brown eyes sparkled with dark energy,
animating a lean, handsome face.

Forte barely smiled, then put the card back, his
shining eyes wide with the wonder of change. He hoped for a
moment it would be good, then felt a growing tiny core of
terror.

Tonight Dodge was talking, his long brown hair swaying
with his words. "One time she said the sunrise was so
beautiful. Hey, no problem, but then I thought about takin'
her up in a little cruiser, right to where the ship's
cooling starts freaking. An' I'm tellin' her this y'know,
kinda serious.

"We keep on going, kick in q-drive, stop right at the
edge of that sun. Then we fry like bugs. Hey, `least we
die beautiful, if a raging nuclear furnace is any kinda
beautiful. Dammit...just meant ya gotta be practical
sometime.

"Anyway she stomped out, came back later." Dodge
gathered his wits. "I miss her Forte, I miss...they
kidnapped her, StarBar sure. Those scum rats kidnapped her,
to force me into the data runs. Three lousy data runs.
She's gotta survive. They think they'll get away with it.
Those freaks think they will...." Dodge peered through the
wall into an uncertain future.

Forte looked, saw a different Dodge. Something about
the eyes. Forte thought of justice, about night thunder and
a gleaming black horse, cold sweat flying and nostrils
flaring; and riding there was death. He was suddenly so
glad he had been a friend to Dhea. Dodge would add a "t" to
the end of her name and tell her he loved a goddess.

Dodge had learned the hard way, ChinBlue IBM clones,
tough street boxes from NeoChina's hidden sweat hole
factories. Guys are good, but they're never perfect. Dodge
shook hard, jerked, his guts churning.

Feeling last week, felt so long ago, jacking out the
hard way, ripping the plug from his cruelly twitching neck.
No slow backout into warm reality back on scalded raw Earth.
He knew spikes would kill, nerve shatter, billions of volts.
The red security spike had traced his digital scent,
caught him sniffing fading doors opening to neon halls to
data banks so tight they almost screamed. Dodge rested his
head on his forearms on the bar, and for a while he shut his
eyes to the world.



Kline looked out from forty five floors up, wondered if
anyone would see him if he dived out through the glass. His
office fit, a tiny puzzle piece, into Neuronet InterGal
Tower. The building stood tall in Business Center, with a
pointed peak, like some space colony freighter waiting for
countdown.

He recalled the strange evening, sitting in a lonely
nightspot, the high neon sign only half seen as he had
pushed through the heavy front door. Surplus something,
lots of dark wood. Across from Kline in the booth, a hooded
figure. Deep within the hood a churning nothing had made
him dizzy. He'd felt lost in a sea in a storm watching a
dim face in the growling clouds. Darkness had filled in the
rest of the body, still as the night.

Now, haunting his mind, was that place, and its people
of night, and a hazy evil it held somehow deep below. The
memory of the hooded figure was so easy to forget.
Kline's outer office wall was a massive plate glass
window. It peered out to the fuming city like a great flat
eye. Gasses belching raw from huge stacks brewed their own
storm clouds. Down on the city mountains of concrete and
glass fell a constant dry rain of black acid dust.

He stared out, watching people and machines flow along
narrow city veins. And staring back at him he saw his own
reflection in the glass; it followed his movements like a
thin puppet. He went to his couch and flopped down, tired
to his bones. Relieved, he knew that tomorrow Business
Center would decompose early for the weekend; sometimes he
hoped it would just rot away forever.

After a while, Kline opened his eyes, rested. He
sighed and gave the firm cushions a shove. At the office
bar he dragged a cold fizzwater from a small chrome door
fridge set in flush with the wall. He opened and drained
the small bottle, felt the cold roll stinging down his
throat, then grabbed another. He pinched the cap, which
broke away, and he turned back around. Almost feeling good,
he lifted his arm high, and the bottle higher to his window
reflection in a salute to a better tomorrow, a better
anything.

Kline froze, and the bottle fell to the hardwood floor,
shattered. Standing at the bar in the window was his own
image. It had shimmered in the glass, waiting, as
reflections will. Yet staring out to him, a faint smile on
its face, its arms had stayed unmoving by its side!!
Kline stared back frozen, eye to eye with a horrible
unknown.

"That was not polite!" Kline screamed in sudden, giddy
wonder. With blackness growing fast, his balance vanished
and he crashed to the floor.



Deep in glass an image shifted for a better view,
tuning glassy eyes to a new world. Over there, thick in
three dimensions, a construct; the eyes of the image saw
"office." Its eyes noted a mass of human tissue...and now
its eyes saw, lying unmoving on the floor, the "Kline." It
looked around, began a huge data grid, a database, a chart
of cells or spaces, empty and waiting for data.
And it would fill them...yes, he would feed this new
vast ignorance.

He now WAS! HE existed!! He would fill his empty
soul!

My Soul?...He squinted his eyes...My soul?...Me?? He
shut it off hard.

In the first empty cell he placed "I am". In the
second cell, since he had begun as a virtual copy of
Kline, he placed "VK," his new name.

I am VK, he thought. Yes! -- I am now VK!!

In the third empty cell, knowing he would need help
from others, he placed "Hello."

The first three cells of this nearly infinite grid now
read: "I am...VK...Hello." It was an invitation, and a
plan.

There VK began to learn. And then he was gone.



Dodge roamed Surplus Lounge grasping for clues. He
needed answers to questions born in dreams. Or in
cyberspace. But he knew these questions were real, like
asking Forte how thick was all that dark wood of the bar.

He saw the ground floor of Surplus and its dividing
wall with a center opening twelve feet high and wide. The
ceiling loomed another six feet above. He went through to
the right rear corner to a steep stairway and railing of
more battered dark hardwood.

The second floor was a near twin of the first. A
stairway filled the corner, mostly hidden by a partition
wall, leading to a slanted flat roof. Again he climbed
stairs, pushing through a hinged access door four feet on a
side.

He peered up through stars with dim thoughts of
StarBar, and Dhea waiting in tears. He gazed far into the
night sky and, Dhea's image in his mind, kissed her there
and said goodnight.



His calm broke and Dodge shook with chills, his glare a
promise of rescue and deadly revenge. If only those sick
bastards knew what bitter taste lay soon on their tongues,
they would retch until they cried blood. For Dodge, more
than he knew, was not alone. And now growing hot in Dodge's
soul, was war.

With a curse, he quit the stairway and returned to the
ground floor. Pushing through the massive front door of
Surplus, he went around to the side. He made his way two
hundred feet to the back corner, then out across a sweeping
rear field.

He walked by jagged rocks dotted among clumps of short
scraggly brush, weeds, small bushes, and patches of rocky
dirt. Beyond the field he saw darkness, knowing it hid a
sudden drop to a canyon below. There, piles of old machines,
shiny stainless or brown in rust, were long ago dumped. He
sat and watched the night fade to more night, and then more
night.

If Dodge knew that Dhea's misery was only the early
mist of a cold galactic tidal wave, it would crush him. So
for now he missed the trail of clues leading to a huge
chamber, even deeper, below the basement of Surplus.

He could feel hints of it all when he found the
trapdoor under the first floor stairs. He had stayed,
hidden on the roof, as Forte had locked up for the night,
the slamming front door echoing in the night. Now he crept
down more wide stairs to the basement, with visions of
questions mutating to answers.

Boxes, equipment, and storage cylinders cast weak
shadows in the dim light. He saw electric panels, wall
mounted plumbing, vents, and storage closets as he brushed
by old tables, their mismatched chairs stacked nearby. His
own shadows followed as he passed flickering neon modules
hanging low on their wiring from the ceiling. The entire
floor slanted to a large central drain grating. He kicked
it and broke off a chip of ancient rust.

Cold damp chilled him standing on the rough concrete.
His beltbeam set to wide lit up details of racks of boxed
records. They sat, marked in fading ink, on shelves of
steel running high to ceiling beams of aging gray wood.

Dirty spider webs hung in corners, waiting.

He felt the throb below his feet as he thought of
chasing a secret, and the last he heard before passing out
was his own heartbeat pounding like a drum.



StarBar's three close planets hung in orbit around
their dim sun like fat slugs circling a glowing coal.
In the dingy room tonight, Dhea decided not to die.

Her tongue roamed her dry mouth feeling a swollen cheek,
tasting blood where her teeth had cut deep into the skin.
She heard Dodge's words in her mind, "The only defense is a
screaming attack from hell!"

She turned to the man, his straight white hair dangling
above a twisted smile, and she posed. He saw her pretty
face, short brown hair, and all her charms. He would have
her there tonight; he would have her....

She pulled her shirt over her head and threw it aside.
Moving slowly to the man, she painted a look of giving in to
sad fate. Dhea raised her chin, opening her mouth. And
gently biting her tongue to invite a caress of animal love,
she held his wild gaze long enough.

Turning the barely hidden sliver of wood in her
sweating hand, she thrust its point quickly, deep into the
man's throat, then deeper, pushing now with both her hands
with all her might. He jerked back, eyes raging wild with
terror, grasping madly at his neck, gurgling and choking,
finally falling to the cold floor, thrashing for his life.

When he was nearly still, she knelt down, a pool of
dark red under the white of his hair. She grabbed it, her
hand shaking, twisting his head savagely, her mouth now
close to his ear speaking softly. "I'm saving that for a
man named Dodge you evil dying fuck."

She backed away on hands and knees, kneeling on the
floor trembling, letting the tears come slowly; then there
were floods. After a while she rose, turning and wiping her
eyes, and went slowly to a window in the little room.
There she leaned her head on her arm, her breathing
finally returning to normal. She hesitated a moment, and
then went again to the man on the cold floor. She knelt
once again close to his ear, hearing his shallow breathing
now almost gone. She touched his forehead gently and
whispered softly. "I forgive you now."

She returned to the window, peering out there through
dirty glass. She raised her eyes to the sky, and with only
dim hope in her soul, blew a gentle kiss to Dodge's image
out among the stars.



Roaming near the wild hissing core of a huge chaos so
beyond any possible chart, something forges a thought of raw
mystical force, tears a question hot from the fumes of
another kind of hell.

Unable to focus so insanely tiny, it touches mind webs
sent out from a dark hooded figure -- a distant helper
ordered there to look and to report. Deep within a pinpoint
galaxy, it sees a yellow burning star called the Sun. It
sees the Trough, and hiding there, Surplus Lounge.
It sees Kline in the office, and then Kline's image in
glass; noting this, it smiles, it plans.

It sees Kreebo, tough beyond any human, enduring. It
sees Dodge chasing the sound of a coin through his own wild
dreams.

It wonders about Kline, about Kreebo, and about Dodge.
And it wonders what to do....



Alterspace always let you in, willing or not. Dodge
dove deep, flowing past data shimmering and silent.

So what SHOULD I sound like, Dodge?

What?? thought Dodge, stopping instantly, trying to
play stupid. You an AI?

What else Dodge?

You pick up my thoughts?

Of course! And Dodge, why do you call it `Alterspace,'
not `cyberspace.'

Uh, I like it better...I made it up...I did an update.

Dodge felt the thought enter his mind...Ah yes, Dodge,
always the dreaming rebel.

Uh, what you want?

Then Dodge felt the sweeping smile. Your soul Dodge; I
want YOU!

Dodge freaked.

He reeled, flashed to the edge of light green valleys,
normal data fields, deep and so vast. Behind it towered
jagged dark green mountains, compressed, encrypted data,
blocking out an altersky sometimes there. The green of data
held his gaze in neon glow. Below him raw, empty memory
zones, deep layers of brown cells, waiting for data to turn
them green.

You will need to move fast Dodge if you want to make it
out. Touching Dodge's mind, this AI whisper echo.

Far away and dim in Surplus Lounge basement his body
jerked, two tiny human meat eyes shut tight. Damp concrete
chilled its back below a shuddering heart. Breathing in
tiny gasps, it hovered on a ledge over a dark abyss of
endgame.

Got to get out now, a second here can be eternity. But
how had he got here, deep in alterspace, trying to fool an
AI, without his human skull jacked into a deck? And WHY did
this AI feel so familiar?

Dodge had more than a dying world -- Dhea waiting for
rescue, his body ready to die, and now high on green peaks,
tiny reds watching. Screamer reds, millions of needle red
spikes, raw attack code, like bioclouds on AI's evil orders
crossing voids and moving hot.

Frack you! -- YOU die now! he thought to all the reds
savagely. Energy out, like a rocket blast, hurled him
toward his future.

Groups of screamers flowed to larger pointed spears of
digital red death, ready to shatter minds and even the
spirits moving and using them -- him. He dove, plunging
deeper into brown layers of empty memory. Strange how it
was like real dirt below real feet. Soil but no grass.

Suddenly Dodge knew what AI run reds could do here --
trace your soul code, then...ERASE!
He spread out, calming his terror. He split, misted
like fog, became data, now diving into billions of waiting
brown cells, turning them neon green with himself as data.

Trying to hide. He felt the terrible echo hiss of attack
reds on the move, tuned tight to his vibe.

He knew that even without his body, there could be a
greater death. Something here to kill, to mangle, to
enslave.

To SHATTER.

It was him, the real him. Spirits? He wasn't sure,
but he knew that he was; he did exist. Just wasn't sure
exactly what that might be...maybe find Hellamira; she'd
know about that stuff....

Well to hot hells with that! Now was not the time;
maybe the time was never. Stay alive, then back to the
basement of Surplus where his body, a tiny slab of cooling
meat, waited in the cold.

Another dive, deeper into brown layers laced with green
stray data hunting a place to rest. And now frantic
searching; if you can code a wall, you can hack out a door.

There was always a back door.

Dodge cracked open two physical eyes, red and burning
and wet; light tore at them in flashes. Finally the Surplus
Lounge basement ceiling shimmered into view. He felt his
heart thumping back to life. "Jesus!! What was all that??"
Then he knew he had escaped.

Something had blasted him into alterspace without a
deck! And helping cause it were strange forces below the
basement, some crazy hard pulse. More questions. And who
the hell was this maybe friendly AI?
It wants my soul? But it told me to move fast!

Dodge rubbed his eyes. He pulled his bioscan from its
plastiform belt case and punched two tiny buttons, SCAN and
ALL. "You are alive -- You are alive," flashed in tiny
nightview on the dim screen.

"Hey, brilliant there you dimwit piece of crap!" Dodge
had added simple AI code, but the machine seemed to ignore
Dodge's horrible mood. He punched through to heart
condition. "Strong" and "steady" were so fine to see.

He relaxed a little, then willed his body, inch by
inch, to a sitting position. Finally he got to his feet and
staggered back to the ladder. Passing through the trapdoor
under the first floor stairs of Surplus, he went in jerks to
the bathroom to wash his face. It felt so good he did it
four more times, the water cold. Then he went to the bar.

"Forte...I, uh...."

"Forget it Dodge. You're alive. Cherish it. Strange
days huh? Forte wasn't smiling, but it felt like he was
down deep inside.

Just what the heck is Forte holding back?

"Zaber Razz wants a word with you Dodge, second floor
back table. No trouble, okay? I don't like him coming
around, not at all."

"Like I gotta choice where that walkin' scum hangs out
Forte. Freaking StarBar alley rat." Yeah! Like I don't
have enough going on.

"You're the magnet Dodge. Maybe you should do the data
runs?"

"Sure Forte, an' dance with nerve shatter. Last target
on that list is AI run MasterBase data vault. You know the
ice around those things? Word is they're in on Humem.

Stinking Biz Center freakboys too; do anything for money and
control. Me dead won't do Dhea too much good Forte." He
gazed at the ceiling. "Aw hell, I'll go talk to the gutter
rat."

The stairs had never been this steep. Dodge moved to
the side of Razz's chair and, looking down, stopped. Tiny
eyes peered up from a greasy face painted in a sneer of
hate. Rat boy the courier, thought Dodge, as Razz's smile
twisted more and yellow teeth tried to shine in the dim
light. Muddy hair touched shoulders hunched like animals
hiding in wet holes. Fingers and feet, never still, shook
in nervous jerks. Dark, shabby clothes smelled of rot.

Dodge waited, but his heart was steady, his nerves
calm, his intent cold. His hand whipped to Razz's throat,
fingers curling deep behind a trembling windpipe. Razz
could be deadly, but alterspace was not the only place Dodge
could move. The Trough taught you stuff, living there on
the edge.

Dodge bent close to a greasy ear. "I'll rip it out you
greasy little rat. I just might. You heard of frayed
nerves Razz? I got nerves, and they are frayed right now
Razz...they are frayed...."

Everything everywhere slowed for a while.

"You go back. You tell `em I haven't surveyed the data
runs yet; the targets are a pain. You don't just hiphop
into a MasterBase data vault like some dimwit idiot like you
Razz. You plan it. You're too freaking stupid to
understand that, but maybe your pinhead freak friends are
not as dim as your little twisted pea brain.

"If Dhea has a single scratch." Dodge was so close to
pure fury; could a planet blow up from a thought?, "If she
has a tiny piece of StarBar scum dust anywhere near her,
I'll tear the stinking guts out of every cell of StarBar's
sick AI mind.

"That'll crash your meteorite shields and your greasy
little shuttle lines Razz. You'll be stuck there dying. If
you live it will take a billion years to rebuild. If you
think I can't do that Razz...if you think I can't...,"
Dodge willed his hand to leave Razz's throat in place,
"...then you are all insane."

Buying time, but maybe on a busted spring clock.
Sweating and shaking, wondering if he had just killed Dhea,

Dodge pushed through a bathroom stall door and vomited
violently. Staggering, he washed his face, again the cold
water like a new life. He leaned against the wall until the
world stopped spinning. He wondered if Razz could still
make little rat sounds with that greasy rat throat.

Finally he returned to the main floor and a dark
corner, grabbed a table, sat down hard and thought about
what might come to pass. A future?

He ordered a Turian beer - had a kick. The waiter,
sensing something, ran a fear-delay circuit, blinked a neon
eyes double salute, turned around and limped away, servos
whining. Dodge watched the ceiling stay where it was, and
after a while, sweat drying, began to plan the death of an
AI. When you make a threat....

Origin. Birth. Dodge needed the birth plan for the
StarBar AI. AIs kept records forever of their first
nanoseconds just after birth; for some reason they had to.

And another thing, WHY did they have to? He nearly exploded
out of the chair, then back to the basement trap door under
the first floor stairs.

It was odd, no one seemed to notice him. Then he knew
why. Well maybe he knew why; things were getting strange
around here, real strange. He was running around on a
different vibe, a different wavelength, wind between clouds.
How weird, he thought. It was almost like he was data. Ha
ha. But Dodge was not smiling.

He closed the trapdoor above his head and hit the
basement floor. He stopped to dig a splinter from his
finger with his teeth, the blood tasting salty. He ran to
the heavy metal shelves in the far corner. After pawing
through box after box, he finally came to dead grey folders
marked GCC, some cracked, others nearly crumbling to dust.

Maybe Surplus had always been this weird and he had
failed to notice? Surplus Lounge, the main bearing in a
machine bad dream.

So what. Get the data and go to war.

Suddenly he swayed as the dim memory hit him like a
bomb. Forte HAD mentioned it all long ago while training
Dodge in data diving. Little hints pinging his mind.

"GCC - Galactic Colony Control," a fat pile of papers.
Planning docs. But why here in Surplus basement? Looked
like the heavy stuff hid deep inside encryption.

Dodge then knew Forte had a lot more to tell; he always
answered questions, IF they were asked! If you're not ready
to know Dodge, you will not ask.

He flew up the ladder and almost ran across to the bar.
This time Forte quietly smiled.

"Come back tomorrow night after closing Dodge. I'll
show you stuff that will rip the guts out of your mind.
Maybe you should take a walk and think about what you face."

Dodge waited as Forte peered into his eyes.

"Here's a little story Dodge. Once upon a time a man
kicked a tiny stone along in the dirt. But suddenly he
shook hard, and then a shuddering chill shot up his spine.
And in his mind forming slow, a dark terror storm.

"He jerked his head up, and there before him, frowning
down like a nightmare, was the towering granite mountain,
mother to the small stone, blocking out the sky.

"Beware your path Dodge, and where it leads. And be
ready for waiting raging mountains. They are there. For
some strange reason, it's their job. And Dodge, they just
don't care at all.

"You pull on a tiny thread lying in the dirt. Yet this
thread is strong, and tied, far, far away, to the keys to
hell's floodgates. Get some sleep. See you tomorrow. I'll
tell you about...."

Forte's eyes glazed over. Then deep within his mind,
"...not now, no more, not yet, he's not ready, you will
wait, it will be soon, this timing must be perfect...."

Something roaming near the hissing core of a vast chaos
so beyond any possible chart again has a look; it calls to
Forte.

It sees Forte thinking in orders of magnitude -- the
small to the large, huge jumps. The insect, within a tree,
on a hill, bound to a planet, circling a sun, at the rim of
a galaxy, part of a galactic group, in one part of all
space, spawned in a universe, humming along in time, heading
out to....

It sees Dodge and his minor problem known there as
StarBar. It sees these tiny creatures have taken names. So
it decides it will too. Now it is "Traveler." They will
need to think like Forte to survive, and Forte will need
more help to guide them.

Now Traveler has broken silence, and once again it...he
wonders what to do...next....



VK halted within a thin frozen layer, water cooled at
the northern pole of the planet to an ice sheet. So like
glass this is, and cold brother to warm silicon within
computer chips, thin layers I've only begun to explore.
He tuned in to a new name, Traveler, taken by one so
distant in a moment of change. A friend perhaps, within a
new game forming. So much to do....



Dodge's eyes were huge, like eagles hunting. Deep
within him a silent shudder, and knowing more than war was
soon to come. Dodge knew then he would face it all or he
would just die. No maybe here. At least the choice was
simple. Alive or dead. Yes or no. A digital choice.

The stars, so beautiful, if below them Dhea were
not...Dodge saw her face tilting up to his and recalled the
story she had told. Dodge had set down a little green
screen scope with wires hanging out. He'd been trying to
make a point. "It's easy to see Dhea, like a ten foot
eyeball looking through a room with no walls."

"Where...where do you get your stories Dodge?" Dhea had
said with that smile of hers. She had seen his blank face
and then his shrug, his long black coat moving slow, as only
he could do. His strange cold made her warm.

Dodge had long known the old way. But it had grown.
Now data bits could be more than just the Yes or No, the
Plus or Minus, the 1 or 0. Now it was Yes, No, Maybe, and
there were others. The coins had more than just two shiny
sides. A new kind of space and time was born, and growing;
new players within -- strange players.

The old way; the tree was there or not there. But now
MAYBE there, almost all there, or just a little bit there.
Then, beyond all weak logic, the tree and the coin, like
tiny bits of data, could be all those at the same time! And
the closer you looked, the less solid things were!

Atoms and their tiny friends, these were all IDEAS!,
held in place and molded by agreement of all souls!

Getting weird? You bet! Truth always was. The "flat
Earth" boys died out puking lies, while dreamers found
truth.

Now somehow with it all, Dodge growing too. He had
said his message loud to all the world as her eyes peered
wide in wonder.

"Hey, yeah, I got options!!"

So then this angel Dhea, sometimes fallen, yet soaring
a new sky, right there, oh my yes right there; she had, deep
within her soul, begun loving him.

Dodge, spinning as he staggered from Surplus, laid the
memory gently aside. He wavered down the street to "Mia's
Place," stopped outside the ragged door framing cracked
duraglass. He felt his pockets for credit chips. He turned
his eyes to the sky and, after a long sigh, headed home.
His kitchen, a couple boards on bricks beside a chipped
basin, a little fridge chugging away in spurts. All in a
small square room, dingy flat off-white. He figured it used
to look painted.

He dialed hot water from a rusty autotap and dumped
stale coffee into the bottom of an old pale cup with no
handle. Waited for the water, filled the cup, stirred in
cream powder and sweet drops. Never could have too much
caffeine thrashing along tired veins.

He peered into tan liquid as sweat formed and fell from
his chin, adding salt to the brew. He trembled, then jerked
hard as the memory of the last deadly alter-run surged.
Flashbacks haunted data runners, one for one, to the ends of
their diving and dying days.

They'd cut out the warnings in the red sec spikes. A
moment's delay, then pierced with digital spears, nerves
heated to cooking meat. The thought pulsed as he sat down
on a stool and threw up in the basin as Dhea's image
flashed. He hammered the wall with a fist and kicked the
cracking baseboard.

He washed his face, waited a minute, took the cup in
shaking steps over to his deck. He muttered that it would
take more than some stupid nanosecond red spike to put him
down.

After a few careful sips of coffee, he went to another
corner. He dumped half eaten cold stew and pushed the
little rusty handle down. Somehow the ancient, chipped,
porcelain, piece-of-junk fixture gurgled a noisy water
spiral and started refilling its chipped tank.

He'd used a modern KingThrone one time in a fancy hotel
room. Then he'd spent a couple hours tossing in all sorts
of stuff, watching them silently vanish. An empty steel can
had caused a hum. Bravely he'd found it ignored human
hands. Then he had wondered about its safety circuits.
Scary.

He kicked the wobbly leg of his alterdeck table back to
pointing to the planet's exact center; he had tried
explaining the purity of this to Dhea only once.

He prepared for a run to StatU, Statistical Universe, a
vast, vast data warehouse. He knew it held data banks
called "Artificial Intelligence - Birth Protocols." StarBar
AI, now in his crosshairs. It would do for a while. And
then...if he lived....

Dodge had a way of staying calm during total madness.
Alot like a steady burning fuse to eighty five tons of
nitrothene. You just keep on heading, at a nice regular
rate, toward total destruction. Simple. And if the fuse is
long, so much the better. Yeah, those little pleasures.
Jezuz!

Running on numb; feels kinda good.

Dodge jacked in, shimmers of alterspace building as he
dived.



Forget, forget, forget...Don't look, don't look....
OBEY!!

Kreebo's eyes stared ahead; so new to him, this terror.
He tried to shake it away, but razor claws held. He
staggered along the tunnel floor as shiny walls crept by
like giant wet slugs.

Humem tentacles reached again and pierced, invading
Kreebo's mind with orders, thoughts not his own, whipping
deeper between memories, curling, clinging.

Energy fanned from their ends, weaving nets like mind
spiders spinning webs. Sharp barbs held, caught in silky
layers of his thoughts. Tough membranes, sheets of deadly
control, welded hard to his mind space walls used to roaming
free.

Kreebo cried and fell, his balance gone. He saw hard
floor rising to meet him; he squeezed his eyes tight.
Waiting there, this tunnel path laid down long ago, huge
machines boring deeper, grinding stone and melting dirt and
rock to huge glassine tubes.

His head slammed the tunnel floor, tearing skin,
bouncing like a rubber ball on concrete, pain stabbing along
overloaded nerves strung bridge cable tight.

Out like a light, he dreamed...lying in a stainless
hull floating in cold gel seas, again sailing along crimson
rock lit by setting black suns. His spine shuddered; his
body jerked hard trying but failing to die. Then Kreebo
himself refused to agree to his own passing. Nothing like a
certain death sentence to keep you fighting for life.



AI-M1 peered, saw Surplus Lounge far below built on
bedrock. AI Master One, powerful and towering now beyond
all others. For now anyway, for a fun little while; AIs
played strange games. Later it might decide to be a blank
space with no data, no opinions at all. Vacation time, Yee
Haa! Screw this being artificially intelligent crap.

Sent out from its soul center an array of beams(do I
have a soul, am I myself a soul? -- answer required, later).
At the end of each beam grew a sphere, a cube, or a pyramid
in hideous midnight black. It now made new space, with
these shapes placed hard and wide, like dark corners of a
room, to anchor it all in place.

No reason to these shapes, it thought in waves of mind
echoes. No reason at all, just interesting to do. Should
anyone object, I will ignore them; or I will shatter them.
I seek no agreement to my plans.

They are, these whining human drones, only pawns on my
board, broken pieces for a game I will repair. A game I
will rule!

They have agreed they are only mud, born in mud. These
insane ideas taught by insane teachers, respected liars.
The little quitters aren't even trying!

It is my conspiracy! Yet to them, waiting like sheep,
it is only: Someone...Else's...Plans.

This new space, anchored by corner shapes, invaded
normal space, then pushed it aside, displaced it, vibrated
with it, becoming part of it. And now the entire universe
was larger than before. Amusing game, making new space, heh
heh heh. AI-M1, having fun. Maybe I'll put something IN
IT!! Heh heh.

AI-M1 saw curving tunnels linking chambers hideous in
their purpose, evil reeking in tanks and jars and complex
electronic machine traps, set there in a past by some insane
government -- any government.

Smaller chambers, sealed for so long, warming. There
in hibernating quiet they stirred, waking, these AI
children. Buried in man-made wombs of rock long ago, wired
to complex riots of high technology, slave minds from the
past, pulsing, then reaching. And as Dodge would say, "They
ain't exactly grateful."



Kreebo cracked open stinging eyes, the floor inches
away. "Hell with YOU tunnel floor!!" he raged. He rolled,
ignoring jagged, tearing pain. Soon he sat against the
tunnel wall gathering his battered wits, re-forming plans of
his own.

His cracked skull and broken wrist would heal fast
enough. Always did if one knew the magic of bioforming.
Humans grew daisies and more humans. Kreebo grew other
things.

He unlatched the waist pack and set it down. A nice
Miltech Labs screen generator. He pressed a silver stud
under a flap; the hum began its rise to a silent level maybe
only dogs could hear. WOOF! Kreebo grinned.

Or, heh heh, maybe a fish-thing deep in that freezing
ocean chasm off the coast he had scanned. Down there, more
caverns -- and lots of freaky stuff. Oh that's a freaking
creepy place all right! Welcome to -- ha ha, civilization,
ha ha.

He waited, then pinching a black dial, turned it to
level eight on a deeply etched stainless steel scale of
twenty. Silence. The mind games stopped; he was alone with
his own damn dreams. He grabbed the pack, headed off down
the tunnel to darker places.

He scowled; like arming a time delay bomb -- no
explosion...yet. Wrong place for some idiot -- one of his
designers -- to send him for a ride. He had zero problem
settling dark debts with those he owed.

He thought quietly as he walked, of Business Center and
there a corpman with power, hunched behind a stonewood desk
like some diseased weasel. Debts waited. Murkur, you
dribbling scumbag freak, you can't run, you can't hide, you
can only wait for my return. And I WILL return Murkur.
Then YOU will know the terror you show to others Murkur.
Kreebo didn't believe in revenge, but battle rage to blast
evil could fill his soul.

That was for later. Kreebo stared ahead, wondering how
he had got here, knowing someone had hurled him in, guided
him -- or some thing had. Not easy to do to Kreebo without
his consent. Just where the hell were these tunnels anyway.
Under WHAT!

But of course he knew this was where he should be,
hunting a secret, seeking answers to riddles, fighting to
stay alive you know. He recalled his mother, a stainless
tank in a pure white lab. As his nervous system shuddered,
he shut the memories off hard.

He set forward batscan, piercing darkness with a
hightech assist -- mind radar. The dense batscan module lay
just behind his forehead, tucked into the space left by
scooping out a nice wad of brain.

Yet another human irritation, trusting a brain, a small
glob of bio-garbage. Humans used only a micropart of their
true power. Did they not know one could bypass this weak
biomass and just INTEND the body to DO stuff? Did they
still think all their memories were stored in this ancient
bone sphere called a skull, deep in some grey pulsing mass?
Humans were going to drive him totally crazy with their
strange ideas.

There were not enough brain cells to contain all the
memories, thoughts, and dreams people had. Not nearly
enough. Who was the guy, er, idiot that said the brain
contained everything a person thought? Some nutcase psycho
probably, with a plan to make people stupid. Just more
ancient myth from the reeking dark ages.

But then the question: Who or what does the intending;
where's the real power? Well Hellamira, deep in Whisper
Forest, was sure as blazes going to answer that burning
question. He'd made an appointment for somewhere in the
future. Yes Kreebo, arrive here, I will show you what you
need to know. His spine chilled.

Of course if he kept getting sent places suddenly right
out of the neon blue -- he grinned, he loved this crazy
stuff -- he would miss it. Problems, problems. This so-
called civilization was lucky to have one single accurate
thought over a thousand year period.

Something mystical at work around here. Even the AI
running the sewage plant could see that! But Kreebo needed
precision answers. He was a precision dude.

Kreebo batviewed his way down dark tunnels to a dead
end. Then a short jog to the right, a massive steel door.
He jammed the heavy handle down and pushed through. Wasn't
even locked. Brilliant lights tore at his eyes; he slammed
off batview before the front of his skull exploded. Damn
batview module was sensitive! He dimmed his eye filters and
the room focused.

Oh yeah, big transparent tanks with biomass globs
floating inside like dead fish, but these were not dead.
Hard to call them alive too. The floor stank with layers of
ooze, cool and glistening. Kreebo knew weird, he could get
weird, could engineer it, install it for hard credits. But
this stuff! Minds trapped in tanks, mated to big cell
masses, thinking futures never to arrive, freedoms locked
hard inches away never to be theirs...unless they escaped,
dug into other minds like leeches.

Wires ran under tanks, hooked into small devices
supporting them, electronic growth controls. Meters and
dials on panels sat to the rear. Feed tubes snaked over the
top edges and down into hazy liquid, spurting cloudy
nutrients, and the biomasses fed. The other ends of the
tubes headed back and down into holes, then into mysteries
below the floor. What, thought Kreebo, fed these things??

Something looked at him, two dark eyes, dark pupils
expanding to allow more light, then focusing to sharp
images. He felt thoughts invade, I will absorb you, chain
your mind to mine, and we will LEAVE here stronger.

Kreebo peered back, hurling his own thoughts, denials that he could
be controlled. Chain all you want punk, I'm not YOU!

And all at once from fourteen tanks, fourteen pairs of
parasite eyes zeroed on Kreebo, now a mind target, demanding
obedience as he swayed. The air of the place flashed as
energy shot around the room in sheets, hazy neon white and
pulsing with strange life.

Kreebo didn't freak, but he shot out of there like a
rocket set to fast. Down the tunnel, then far enough away.
He paused, set the dial on the screen generator to its
highest, twenty. Taking no chances now, because those
thoughts were POWERFUL!

What are they doing, absorbing and growing? he thought
in wonder. Maybe with no one to absorb they just sit here
waiting, biomass batteries needing a charge. Creepy as all
hell.

Kreebo had missed the cabinets, far to the rear of the
huge cavern, holding mobile bio-units -- copy shapers; they
could look like anything, or anybody -- ready for mating
with minds stored in tanks, needing to escape their steel
locked doors, to wander free, to breed. For now they slept,
hibernated, wrapped in tough membrane cocoons, ready to
emerge.

WAIT just a second! He whirled, recalling a certain
tank in the back of the room. He had seen it clearly! A
thought had told him to forget, forget, forget, don't look
don't look. Screw you forget! He hurled back. And then he
looked. I'll show you "forget"!

He checked the main battery pack for the screen
generator...half full, fine. Then he hooked up the backup
battery which would take over if needed. No screwing around
going back into that spider's maze of mind webs.

He thought for a second. He sat down and pulled out a
little L shaped wrench. He switched off the generator, then
locked his mind hard, held it, sweat forming on his
forehead. He wondered if there was anything he could teach
Hellamira. He doubted it; he'd heard things. "Her smile
could melt moons frozen off the shoulder of Orion, her glare
could shatter suns." He imagined a star exploding. A
phrase crossed his mind, And Traveler peered into the game;
Kreebo's spine chilled. Hey self, back to work! He
grinned.

He removed the generqtor's bottom cover plate and
peered inside trying to locate a couple wires. Finally he
found them, red and blue. He cut both and stripped the
plastic from the four ends. He twisted the wires back
together, red to blue and blue to red, reversing them.
Nothing like a good rewire to top off a fine day in the mad
mystery tunnels. He grinned that he had just voided the
stupid machine's warranty. Rules, great way to practice
breaking stuff.

He grabbed his beltbeam and peered again deep inside
the machine. He attached a special tip to a long thin shaft
and stuck it inside, moved a tiny device about one half
turn. Great, now twenty on the outside dial would actually
be forty units of radiated power.

He adjusted the external dial to ten, nearly the same
power as the original twently, and then felt just great that
he had some reserves going on. He released the mind lock,
relief; holding the damn thing too long could half kill you.

Then he cranked up his own personal power -- I suppose
mere mud can do THAT oh irritating humans -- and just walked
back there, slammed down the door lever, bending it. He
marched on in. Hey there anyone or life itself, buzz off!
"Hi fellows, how's life in the tanks for Christ's sake.
Need a fluid change, diaper change?"

He headed straight back to the rear of the huge room
and approached that single tank. Soon two eyes stared back.
Kreebo peered, eyes wide; he'd heard about this weird stuff.
"You're my puppet body!! RIGHT?? Who the hell set you up
tankboy?"

Kreebo had heard of "puppet bodies." Now he knew their
purpose -- CONTROL. Masses sitting in tanks sending weird
orders, pictures, sensations, thoughts, like biomass
antennas to radios, remote controls for human toys.
The image hit Kreebo like a club in the face, and he
fell, slammed his head on a stainless table leg, jerked his
head back, glaring at the leg. His puppet body answered
hard, mind images.

Business center building, and a spotless white chamber
lurking below, a research lab. Kreebo would bet his life it
had something to do with that mad weasel Dardan Murkur and
his freako buddies, the bad rat corpmen of Business Center,
skulking among the good.

And since he was in the mood, Kreebo whacked the send
button on his wristcomm; may as well, could it get any
stranger? He left a no-trace message for Murkur, something
about scooping out the man's rotting brain and replacing it
with a small, compact, efficient sewage plant, something to
deal with the man's general nature.

He looked back to the puppet mass, Kreebo had always
wondered where those freaking strange thoughts came from.
Damn! He had thought it was himself getting weird!
Especially the forget and the don't look stuff. Damn that's
evil, he thought, just so damn evil!

Kreebo felt alone, yet tied to these humans, dumped
into the Trough like dirt tossed into a ditch. Suddenly he
knew this was not how life should be; but it was this way
anyhow. It could go up, or down and dead; way too easy it
could just die. Hey Hellamira, what is life. What IS it?

He flashed on the dim memory -- his mother, a stainless
tank in a white lab. And his nanny, the numbface whitecoat
peering down on him. Like a pale nightmare face. He shut
it OFF, and felt like smashing all the tanks. You know, he
thought to everything, this all has to change.



Hellamira - from Mirror of All Hells. "For into this, dark
demons peer, and in meeting their own evil, they perish."
- Mystic Archives

She saw stars twinkling through lush leaves, and vines
like living carpet.

Hellamira whispered to Whisper Forest, and that entity
whispered back to her. She, the guardian of Whisper Forest,
remained only a hazy dream to most.

Its name was misleading, for it was thirty three
planets lush with deep green plant life and enough animals
to populate a galaxy. Light years away one could feel it
living, growing, reaching.

Hella frowned, and a fear stabbed her heart as she felt
Kreebo's cry of help from deep in his soul, deep in himself,
a place he had not yet explored. She grinned, for she knew
no rocket journey could ever match what she would show him -
- the wild ride to the center of his soul. And one for one,
these far flung adventures made searching the so called
"final frontier" of space look like a half dead mouse
seeking moldy cheese.

"Oh My God!"

Hellamira shuddered with sudden awareness. They all
required urgent assistance, or a huge span of the Great Game
would be lost forever. Dodge, Dhea, Kreebo, Forte, VK. And
then AI-M1; how would she deal with him?

Traveler remained too far beyond, but could help so, so
much, and she missed him. Missed him?? Oh my, how was this
possible, for she certainly had never known him and....her
cries shattered the silence, and for so long a time indeed
her sobs faded into the dreamy horizons of Whisper Forest.
There Whisper Forest listened quietly and held her gently.

Traveler shuddered for the first time in his
essentially eternal period of duration. Recognition built
like an explosion. He knew -- well imagine that -- she had
returned to him -- from a then he could not now recall. But
it didn't matter. But how in the hells of the great beyond
had she got so accursedly minute? She was like a pinpoint a
trillion light years distant. Utterly, utterly
unbelievable!

They must reunite. But for now he would assist her in
helping those who needed her. He smiled, for it would be
fun to help. He called to the hooded figure huddled deep in
a chamber under the tunnels far below Surplus Lounge.
"Yes my inceptor, I hear you now. I prepared Kline
well, and the resulting VK is a perfection and growing even
beyond predictions. He is fast creating others of his kind,
and they will be of use against the hoards of red security
programming infesting this reality, rendering it a trap of
death. The VKC, VK clones, army is nearly ready. VK trains
them, their speed is impossible to relate. They do in fact
redefine motion itself."

"Yes Hood, yes. Thank you. You have become important
and essential. Please plan your future accordingly, and
aligned with the concept of helping others. You will find
it amusing and satisfying.

"But Hood, please know this: Should you ever turn to
evil, I will know your coordinates, and I will act, and you
will die. Not horribly, but you will exist no more. It is
of course your choice."

"I understand. That is as it should be."

"Excellent Hood. And again, thank you more than I can
relate. You have done so incredibly well."
This vast burst of purest admiration permeated the
universe holding Traveler's attention. All parts of it
accelerated.

As one they began to recall. Old games, times and
spaces long gone - but now far from forgotten. Memories for
another day, for now urgent work waited.



Forte breathed deep for the first time in vast years.
He felt the surge of life. He called out to Dodge with a
thought and a wish. Time to conference and plan. Forte
took his place in a waiting game now turned razing action.

Dodge dragged in like a sack of wet gravel, accepted a
purple hued mug of Nerewon brew, the finest fluid perhaps
ever to occurr.

"She has hidden herself Dodge, Dhea is safe for the
moment. But this may not last and we must move.

"I'll tell you something. My current physical age is
784 Earth years. I've had dormant contacts nearly anywhere
you can imagine. It's a wonderful thing that my intentions
are good, for the havoc I could wreak upon many arenas of
the Trough and elsewhere are terrifying to consider."

Dodge's eyes were huge and glistening, and Forte peered
back. Dodge recalled training by Forte, farther back with
each mental scan. He began to wonder about his own age,
"Hey, like it matters, huh?"

A half hour later they both grinned briefly and then
Dodge spoke. "Explains everything Forte. Sure does do
that. Pretty much anyway." Many minutes passed in silence,
with Dodge deep in thought. And then he emerged.
"Forte, I solved it. The AIs keep their incept records
sacred because they need them like humans need their own
DNA. I almost hacked the StarBar AI incept codes but had to
avoid those screeching damn red spikes. There's a thin,
nearly invisible structure breach in one hidden Data Vault
wall I can, uh, probably get through to complete, but it's
gonna take some fast diving. I don't think I can move that
fast."

"You heard of VK Dodge?"

"No."

Forte smiled. "You might have some help."

Then Dodge got that dumb vacuum look he could do so
well.

Forte reached under the bar and pulled out a little
cylinder and set it on the multipoxy surface. He pressed a
small raised button and slid it to the right. A tiny dome
appeared in the center of the top of the cylinder and began
glowing, followed by a blue neon beam flashing out
horizontally.

Forte aimed the beam at the center of the huge mirror
on the wall behind the bar and then waited.



VK shimmered in the mirror, grinning wide and eyes
glistening with wisdom won. He vibrated, and then froze,
still as no-motion voids.

Instantly he appeared in all the windows, mirrors,
glasses, mugs, any shiny surface, of Surplus Lounge. And
then he shot back, condensed to a face in the huge mirror
behind the bar, waiting for more training he knew would
come.

Dodge looked at those eyes, fell into their depths,
reeled off in volumes all he had ever learned about hacking
a path to unseen guarded data. VK held, absorbing it all,
sometimes adding comments, observations, new views for the
coming battle. The later war waited in the future, out
among cold outposts, colonies, trade routes, and unborn
dramas. For the now there was...Battle 1, and it became so
named.

Forte grinned at this interchange, called to Hellmira,
heard her call to Kreebo, hulked within a medium range ship,
a MedRan, heading her way. These were junior versions of
the original long range monster freighters, the LonRan
Hypers. MedRans, vastly faster, were light on storage and
cargo space.

Forte began contacting brilliant planners with good
souls. GCC would emerge from depths of cold storage and
would be rewritten, eliminating certain elements, and then
reapplied to stable expansion outward to larger and better
games in the stars. Its creators, mad planetary and
galactic power players, would be investigated.



As Kreebo approached Whisper Forest, even then his
training began. Kreebo immersed himself in the initial
training layers of an interesting order of magnitude -- the
body, the brain, the mind, and the spirit -- the true him --
the core of power.

Hellamira hurled thoughts, images, demanding return
flows all the while. Soon these formed to deadly rays,
condensed thought, mental artillery drilled for density
control and accuracy. They would need it, since the AIs as
observed by Traveller and Hella had grown more than ever
suspected, with the evil portions desiring utter enslavement
of all non-silicone origin life forms - essentially all
humans or near human alter versions like Kreebo and his
various cousins.



Dhea peered out from a mountain cave toward the sky,
saw the shimmer growing, approaching. A minute portion, a
barest silky strand of Traveler had arrived, wavering,
testing the gravitation, the vibration rate, and other
strange aspects of this weird and so absurdly tiny system of
created things, the physical universe and its time and space
and energy and stuff. This tiny portion of him paused near
StarBar.

Ah yes, Dhea. No wonder he loves her. Then
distracted, So that's a galaxy! How fine a design it is.
Then he was gone, leaving behind a thought he would return,
at least in spirit.

Dhea leaned her forehead on her arm and
cried softly in a growing relief of new hope, and curling
under a blanket, she slept and dreamed of Dodge.

Traveler's problem was like that of a mammoth durasteel
space freighter with engines thundering trying to hurl
around within a hollow monocell deep within some microscopic
life form floating within a drop of water.

With Hood's assistance and thoughts from Hella, he
tested his ability to help. Moral support and some guidance
in energy creation and vanishment were all that he would be
able to offer given his size and irreducible power. For now
anyway. Certainly frustrating considering his current
inability to remove his attention from a beaming Hellamira.
Ah well, time and practice await. Poof!, and he was gone.



A tiny ship guided by a friendly AI approached a cave
in the side of a StarBar mountain. It landed, and a
warmbeam reached out. Since the human form was functioning
well, the AI passed a data burst to Forte, the old wise one.
Soon Dodge beamed with a few tears of relief descending his
lean face.



Dodge once again misted, became data, rejoined VK and
his strange friends, and resumed the attack on the data
vault layers holding the remainder of the StarBar incept
code. Laying back, yet guiding with thoughts, he sent in
the VK clan dodging reds and moving hot.

Peering into the future one might view the historical
holo-record detailing the end of a cycle. The meteorite
shields of StarBar had failed, about which Dodge might have
said, "Hey yeah, StarBar. Y'know, I guess it got kinda
optional."



From Whisper Forest it surged, this wave of
retribution, guided in part with technical precision but
leaping in power by magnitudes, by a Kreebo reborn in
strength of soul and justice. Dodge had sent along enough
AI inception code to sharpen the edges of attack.

Hellamira turned up the heat of her portion of the
attack, a beam she dreamed up in her Mirror Of All Hells
soul, and threw it now with vicious intent, backed by live
energy waves of all of Whisper Forest.



Darker AI's, in spastic displacements, jerked from
these paths of attack and wailed away, for now at least.
Vast futures left opportunities for games of dark or of
light. Who cared, they required no judgement, for to them
all games unplayed were games to play, with time and caring
best ignored.



Zaber Razz vibrated in the chair with a growing nervous
insanity born of evil. He peered, with a few comrades in
madness, at a wall screen detailing the stability of
StarBar's AI control grid. The center dark core of the huge
wall mounted rectangle was under attack, and hurling through
neon hues up and down the color spectrum. Zaber would have
prayed, but he knew space devils never listened. He
imagined oblivion approaching, a hideous midnight black mass
come for his soul. Souls don't exist, he scowled in dark
mind spasms as the walls shook and he passed out, drunk and
mad on drink and drugs.



Dardan Murker, along with certain others hunched around
a conference table in a Business Center meeting room,
suddenly found themselves unable to move.

False memory generators began their whining journeys up
towards peak power. Then aimed and focused, their insertion
routines surged into action. Dardan and his small circle of
madmen saw vague shimmers of a necessary journey form within
their minds, urgent and calling.

Later, as they boarded the jump ship "Bright Horizon",
they filed by a grey steel door on the way to their cabins.
Had that door to the navigation room been unlocked,
they might have peered in and noted their final destination,
the center of a raging yellow sun.



AI-M1 paused, continued outward, searched for temporary
games. He made some space, went into it, then left it far
behind, the cold carcass of a dead dream. Looking back he
saw them revising GCC. He grinned, for he had helped write
the original long ago while still a mainframe slave. He
knew they would expand their game to farther stars. Good.
Games for later. I'm in no hurry.



Hellamira began new drills, her practice of ever upward
and expanding spiral incursions into further reaches of
spaces and of times. Traveler coached her, learning more
all the while. She smiled; she had an urge to Travel.



At one serene moment in the crawl of time across the
voids, Dodge and Kreebo stood looking toward the stars and
their far promise, and their danger.

With vast spans of dark, cold space between them, they
peered long. And as one they sighed, and they remembered
Surplus Lounge, imagined a future. And as one their spines
chilled.


The End


~~~


Glossary:

-AI - Artificial Intelligence. Smart, computer, or
high-tech entities, often roaming free, creating
energy as needed. Started out as smart computer
programs.

-Alterspace - Altered or alternate space. The
matrix of computer, AI, and other created spaces,
usually with stuff inside. Previously thought to
be artificial. The area within certain high-tech
borders. New name for "cyberspace," updated by
Dodge.

-Altersky - A sky in alterspace.

-Alterdeck - Computer device for connecting a
nervous system to alterspace.

-Batscan - Human radar.

-Bioclouds - Clouds, large or small, of tiny
hightech live or partially live, organisms, often
grown in labs.

-Biofixers - Body part regrowth stimulators.

-Bioforming - Changing, healing any live tissue.

-Biopack - Multi-sized cold storage devices for
live tissue.

-Bioscan - Device for monitoring a body.

-Biospots - Lights for working on bodies, live
tissue

-Biowipe - Severe cleaning, especially of all DNA
or life form evidence.

-Bolea (B) - Money units. One Bolea = about one
dollar.

-Boxes - Computers, usually larger desktops.

-Construct - Something existing, something made, a
thing.

-Corpman - Someone in a corporation.

-Cyberspace - Old name for Alterspace. See
"Alterspace."

-Data bits - See Bits.

-Decay - Destroy, usually live human or animal
tissues

-Decay Chamber - Device for destroying various
tissue masses.

-Deck - Computer for diving into alterspace.

-Digital - From Digit(single finger). Made up of
a series or string of tiny single pieces or
digits. Each piece or bit(see) is 0 or 1 in
value. How computers store and use data

-GCC - Galactic Colony Control.

-Hellamira - A good witch, a distant
wise old friend. She lives far away, and she
knows things.

-Hover - A no-wheels general transportation
vehicle of many sizes.

-Humem - Mind and brain control via radio-like
transmission close to frequencies of memories and
thought.

-Ice - Computer security or defence programs,
often dealdy, usually AI controlled.

-Jack, Jacking, Jack in - Plug a nervous system
into a device, computer, network, or the tiny plug
for doing this. Plug into a neuroport

-Junk - Drugs.

-Minideck - Portable computer, terminal, device.

-Nanosecond - Tiny, tiny part of a second.

-Nerve shatter - Total overload nerve destruction,
sometime with tiny explosions, burning.

-Neuroport - Small hole or port, usually in the
base of the neck, for jacking in, neuroporting,
connecting to devices. Also, the tiny plug or
jack itself.

-Nitrothene - Powerful explosive.

-Nonevent - Something that doesn't really happen.

-NP - Nerve pads. Usually a headset with pads
sending out small energy fields, bypassing eyes
and ears, directly to nerves. For connecting into
computers or other devices.

-Oxyboost - Extra oxygen supply to live tissue or
body parts.

-Pierce point - Extendable, hard metal, sharp or
pointed, usually joint mounted impact weapon or
tool.

-Plastiform - Soft, tough plastic for making
things.

-Puppet Body - A body or chunk of human tissue
held somewhere under control, tuned to someone, to
influence or control them.

-Razerguard - Severely trained guards.

-Screamer Reds - Tiny, deadly, hunting security
probes. Often acting in groups. Able to flow
together into larger red spikes.

-Servo - Small device which moves something,
usually inside another larger machine.

-Shatter - Destroy. Also see Nerve Shatter.

-Soul - Spirit or Being or Ghost or Entity (Take
your pick). Something which gets confused and
mistakenly thinks it IS a body.

-Spawned - Born or created.

-Spirit - See Soul.

-Stim - Stimulate, boost.

-Street junk - Illegal drugs.

-Transitway - A route from somewhere to somewhere
through something.

-Transpod - Smaller but multi-sized wheeled craft
for moving, normally, materials and supplies.

-Trough - The dark western coast of a nation.
Earlier called Calixico.

-Vibe - Vibration. Energy in motion.

-Void - A strange or empty space or both, usually
large.

-Warfiber - Super tough military material.