[BGC][Xover][FanFic][Revision] Drunkard's Walk II -- Chapter 6

[Bob Schroeck]

Disclaimer and credits will be found after the end of the
chapter.




DRUNKARD'S WALK II: ROBOT'S RULES OF ORDER

by Robert M. Schroeck



6: Aw, Poor Putty-Tat! He Faw Down And Go *BOOM*!

To see itself through, music must have an idea or magic. The
best has both. Music with neither dies young, though sometimes
rich. -- Ned Rorem

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no
matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and
foremost, and as such I am for whoever and whatever benefits
humanity as a whole." -- Malcolm X



ADP Headquarters. Monday, November 3, 2036. 11:49 AM

"Um, hi, everyone?"

Lisa was a little surprised when her quiet greeting cut through
the squabbling like a knife. The argument surrounding Leon's
desk stumbled to a halt as its participants looked up at the
unexpected visitor.

"Lisa!" Nene flung herself to her friend's side. "Are you okay?
You weren't at... you weren't answering my calls all weekend, and
after what happened at your job, I was afraid you'd committed
seppuku or something!"

Lisa gave Nene a tight smile that broadcast confidence and
determination. "I'm okay, Nene-chan. I just had to cover the
flower show at the convention center all weekend long."

"What happened at your job?" Fuko asked, sincere concern written
across her face.

Lisa shrugged haphazardly. "I got promoted out of lifestyle
stuff and into the real meat. Then I bungled a story and got
busted back down to flower shows."

"You don't seem all that brokenhearted about it," Daley observed.

"Oh, I am, believe me," she replied. "I just decided to stop
crying and start working to get it back."

"Good for you!" Fuko said.

"Yeah!" Nene concurred as the rest of the group around the desk
murmured their assent.

Lisa smiled with genuine warmth. "Thanks, guys. So," she looked
around at the small group, "what's got you all worked up?"

"This," Leon spoke for the first time, and the team stepped away
from the desk as he spun his monitor around. Displayed in a
maximized window was a document headed by a prominent GENOM logo.

"What is it?" Lisa asked as she leaned down to peer at it.

"A GENOM press release concerning our friend 'Loon' -- that's the
'Iceman' to you and the general public, Lisa," Leon added, not
noticing her already nodding in recognition.

"...radical new design...," she murmured, skimming the document,
"anti-rogue boomer based on a modified 33S chassis... intended to
supplement the AD Police... unique proprietary technologies,
patents pending... accidentally released... no threat to the
public... recall system malfunctioning..." She looked up and
around at Leon and the team. "And what's all your opinions on
this?"

A cacophony of voices showered her as everyone began speaking at
once.

"Seems reasonable..."

"...combat sexaroid? Oh, come on..."

"...tougher than a human..."

"...does display what might be new technologies..."

"There's the force field..."

"I don't buy it. Loon himself denied..."

"...you take a rogue boomer's word on..."

"...you take *GENOM's* word on..."

"...doesn't act like..."

"Sexaroids aren't like other..."

"Bullshit, that's..."

"...DD battlemover..."

"...*combat* sexaroid???..."

"...he's a chicken, I tell you, a giant chicken!"

There was a sudden silence.

"What?" demanded Daley.

"I, um..." mumbled Lieutenant Vong.

"Yes?"

"I heard it on an old Americanime show?"

Fuko whapped him one.

As the meeting around the desk degenerated into another argument,
Lisa turned to Nene, who still stood beside her. "What do you
think?"

Nene gazed thoughtfully into the distance and said, "I think that
if you threw GENOM into a room with the truth, you'd risk a
matter-antimatter explosion."

When Lisa stopped laughing, she saw that the door to the chief's
office was finally open. "Nene-chan, I've got to go now, I'm
doing lunch with Uncle Todo. See you after work?"

The young ADP officer nodded vigorously. "Sure! Go enjoy
lunch." A sly grin sneaked onto her face. "Greek again?"

Lisa smiled sheepishly. "What can I say? I like it. And, as it
turns out, so does Uncle."

Nene snickered.

A few moments later, Lisa knocked tentatively on the open door of
the chief's office.

"Oh, Lisa-chan, hello!" The portly black man was already up and
pulling on his rumpled suit jacket, the brown tweedy material
more than adequately hiding the shoulder holster he had begun
wearing after Yoshida's takeover of the ADP building several
years before. "I'm ready to go." He smiled at his niece, an
expression rarely seen on his face in the office. "Which Greek
restaurant is it this time?"

Lisa idly twirled her beret around her forefinger. "Well, I
thought we could do the Mykonos Gri..."

The phone on her uncle's desk rang shrilly, interrupting her.
Todo glanced at the array of lights and lines and froze for a
moment. "I'm sorry, Lisa," he said, recovering and reaching for
the receiver, "I need to take this call first. Could you wait
outside? It's a confidential matter."

"Sure," she said, puzzled, but complied with her uncle's request.
Stepping outside, she closed the door to the office tightly. A
vague suspicion insinuated itself into her thoughts, and she
positioned herself in front of one of the office's plate glass
windows. As innocently as she could manage, Lisa angled herself
so that she could see her uncle without looking like she was
watching him.

Whoever it was on the other end of that call, he made her uncle
nervous. All the bluster and fire that normally defined the man
seemed to have vanished, and his body language... As a gaijin
who had enthusiastically adopted Japanese culture when he'd
married her late aunt, Beauregard Todo was punctilious about
proper etiquette, enough so to satisfy even Lisa's mother.
(Except when it came to the officers under his command, she
amended wryly.) But he was never obsequious, even to the highest
officials; some of his American attitude still bled through the
acquired manners of his adopted land.

However, the caller, whoever he may have been, drove her uncle
into depths of subservience she had never seen in him before.
Every sentence he spoke was punctuated by an abbreviated bow. A
fine sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead, adding a
glistening highlight to his dark skin.

It didn't take her reporter's instincts to realize that whoever
was on the other end of that call held a lot of power over her
uncle. That whomever it was *frightened* him.

*I wonder if Nene can get the phone logs for me,* Lisa thought, a
frown flickering on her face. *I'd dearly love to know what's
going on here.*

* * *

Monday, November 3, 2036. 5:53 PM

Red hair topped a misbalanced pagoda of dishes, themselves
surmounting a Chibi Maruko-Chan T-shirt and denim shorts with a
Dear Daniel patch covering the left rear pocket. Bare feet
padded from the kitchenette to her favorite spot in the
apartment. Once there, an expanse of leg reached out to snag one
caster of a well-padded chair and roll it back from the desktop.

Precariously balancing her dinner in one hand, Nene twitched the
mouse with the other. "Finally!" she breathed as the screen
flickered to life and revealed an "analysis complete" dialog box.
"Any positive results?"

With her free hand she carefully shoved aside the litter of
papers and computer parts that covered the desktop to clear a
small area between the two custom one-hand keyboards that were
her primary interface to her system -- the boxy keypad to the
left and the smoothly rounded semicircular one to the right. As
her dinner jittered and threatened to topple, she rescued first
the salad, then the soup, then the dinner plate, and finally the
tall glass of cola from the wobbling stack. Sliding into the
chair and rolling it back to the edge of the desk, Nene reached
again for the mouse and began scrolling through the automated
cracker's report.

"Nuts," she murmured. "Failure, failure, failure. What *is*
this damn thing?" Frowning, she pushed her rarely-worn glasses
back up from where they had slid down to the tip of her nose.
After almost a week of effort, she was tempted to admit defeat --
the mystery signal from their run-in with Loon was either
encrypted with an algorithm of hitherto unheard-of strength, or
an elaborate deception built out of pure random numbers.

She couldn't accept the latter possibility. It ran against both
her instincts and her common sense. As she continued to scroll,
pausing to read the more promising failure reports, she once
again went over the reasons why it had to be real in an effort to
keep her spirits up. The last thing she wanted to do was admit
failure or deception to Sylia. *I'll only accept 100% success,*
she told herself firmly.

But the truth was, she was almost out of options and tools. The
results she now read came from the last and most powerful
cracking program she had, the one she'd used to break the new AD
Police encryption. And so far, every approach it had tried had
come up blank, too. "Nuts," she repeated, louder this time, and
jammed a tempura shrimp into her mouth before scrolling further.

She finished her dinner and the results log at almost the same
time, paging listlessly through the file in the hopes of finding
something -- anything -- that had showed promise. Upon reaching
the last entry, she started.

*Huh. I left the rosetta for the new ADP cryptosystem in here.
Of course, it won't...* She stared at the screen, frozen
momentarily in mid-thought. *What the heck?* She pushed the
dinner plate away, took a long swig of her cola, and read the
report.

She reread it twice to make sure she understood the implications.

"Whoa." She pushed back from the table.

The encryption schemes used by the mystery signal and the new ADP
radios were almost identical. They were close enough that the
cracking program had been able to brute-force the difference.
But where the two had differed, the mystery signal had been a
tougher, more robust algorithm.

There was something profoundly disturbing about this, Nene felt.
Her hacker's instincts were all on edge. Acknowledging them, she
opened the files that held the decrypted packets and began to
study them.

Half an hour and a liter of cola later, she was certain of two
things: It was a networking protocol of some sort. And she'd
never seen it before. She opened a browser and linked to her
favorite programmers' metasite.

After searching references and archives all over the Net for
eight hours, she uncovered the protocol. Or its distant
ancestor, at least -- an abandoned standard for radio telecomm.
Like the closest relative of the ADP encryption scheme, it was a
fifty-year-old product of the United Nations' private, internal
computer network, discarded decades ago.

Now *that* was too much of a coincidence to wave off. Was
someone in the ADP using a variant on this antique protocol,
perhaps gambling on a "security through obscurity" strategy? If
so, whoever it was had to be good enough to hide from *her* in
the ADP network, and all egotism aside, she didn't think that was
likely. Over the last five years, she had installed or activated
back doors in every ADP system both public and secret --
including a couple "black" projects that didn't even officially
appear on the ADP budget. There was nowhere someone could hide a
secret network where she couldn't at least see evidence of it.

Not to mention that there hadn't been *any* ADP presence at the
fight. The boomers had operated on standard frequencies using
familiar protocols, despite their improved hopping algorithms.
That left...

She nodded to herself. The only real possibility, after all.

Loon.

And Loon had the UN symbol on his helmet.

*"Three times is enemy action,"* she quoted to herself mentally.
*Three instances of the United Nations so close to each other
*can't* be a coincidence. But why would the UN provide the
algorithm for the new ADP cryptosystem? And how could Loon have
had anything to do with it? It was contracted years before he
showed up. And *why* would he have anything to do with it?*

Putting these thoughts aside for future consideration (and
possible presentation to Sylia), she took the old protocol and,
using it as a guide, began dissecting the data. If the protocol
were indeed the correct one, the packets were extremely
complicated login signals. Tracing their record structure, she
discovered yet another oddity: the origin system seemed quite
confused about the current date -- its clock was almost 35 years
behind, if she'd identified the date/time sync fields right. The
transmitting computer seemed to think that it was July of 2001.
*Weird,* she thought, shaking her head.

A thought occurred to her. *You know, I have all the protocol
specs. I should be able to spoof this thing if we run into it
again. I just have to write a dumb little server program to
respond to its login request and feed it dummy data.* A grin
spread across her face. *And then I can poke around and see what
it is that's sending this oddball signal to begin with.*

A mouseclick later, and she had begun to write the program. She
never noticed the hour -- until her alarm clock went off.

* * *

16 Tokyo Day Times. Thursday, November 6, 2036. 1:05 PM

Lisa smiled grimly as she typed away. If they were going to keep
her on "human interest" stories, by the gods she'd work in her
own topics among the assignments. She paused and sat back to
read what she'd written. *Not too bad,* she nodded. *That
sentence is clumsy, let's fix it. And there's a misspelling.
Take care of that.*

She brought the window holding her notes forward and consulted
them again. This article on fans of the Knight Sabers was going
to be one of her best pieces yet, she was sure. And it served
multiple purposes, too. Not only was it a "lifestyles" story
that verged on the kind of hard-news coverage she wanted back in
on, it also was the most obvious salvo in the publicity war she
and Sylia had planned so many weeks ago. But not the first --
that had been all the little freelance writing and editing jobs
she'd done for the various online archives and encyclopedias,
gotten thanks to Nene and Sylia's contacts -- jobs that
invariably included evening out the coverage of the Sabers
therein.

Now came the first newspaper article in the campaign, approaching
the topic obliquely -- emphasizing not the Sabers, but their
otaku. She hated putting the standard "look at the weird people,
folks" spin on the article, but it was one of the things that she
had to do to get past the subtle hand of GENOM censorship. With
luck, the opinions expressed by the fans would carry more weight
than the implied editorial ridicule.

She'd certainly enjoyed the research. That Yamaguchi guy at
Tokaido P.O.N., for all that he worked for a rival newspaper, had
been more than happy to cooperate. He had hooked her up with a
huge network of Sabers otaku, some of whom had surprised her.
She'd've never expected Fuko MacNamara from the ADP to have been
a closet Knight Sabers fan, let alone the premiere Sabers fan
artist in Japan. But her pseudonymous website displayed dozens
of depictions of the Sabers, in startlingly lifelike poses and
detail. Even more were for sale -- Fuko turned a tidy profit on
her Sabers drawings.

Lisa had visited Fuko's apartment a few days earlier, and the two
of them spent hours poring over several large portfolios full of
artwork. "I generally like pastels or pencils," Fuko had said as
they paged through her work. "But I've tried every medium at one
time or another." She'd gestured at a painting hung in the
corner of her apartment that served as a studio. It depicted the
four Sabers in stereotyped sentai poses looming over the smaller
figure of a man, who stood covering his eyes in embarrassment.
Lisa had found herself giggling wildly when she realized that the
man was Leon McNichol. Fuko shared a smile with her. "Like
that -- that was my first work in acrylics."

"Wow. Not bad. But Leon?"

"I saw him in that exact pose right after one of the times that
the Sabers beat us to the punch. He just stood there watching
them, shook his head, and covered his eyes." Fuko laughed.

"You want to know what my best selling pieces are?" Fuko then
asked, a conspiratorial glint in her eye. "You can't tell your
uncle or anyone else at ADP. I'd never live it down."

"Of course," Lisa had answered. And then Fuko had pulled out her
portfolio of hentai Knight Sabers art. They had reminded her of
that 20th Century artist Sorayama, and his "sexy robots:"
gleaming fusions of skin and metal and ceramic, hardsuits
blending imperceptibly into lush flesh to form visions of techno-
eroticism that embarrassed and excited her at the same time. The
more extreme images were laden with implicit and explicit lesbian
themes, and ranged from autoeroticism all the way up to full-
blown orgies.

Lisa hadn't even begun to form the questions that she wanted to
ask when Fuko had smiled and shrugged. "I've got a sick mind.
What can I say? Something about those hardsuits gets me hot."
She laughed.

"What about your fiance?" Lisa had managed to stammer out.

Fuko's smile had grown even larger. "They get *him* hot, too."

Lisa couldn't even come up with a reply to that, and didn't try.
She did buy several prints, though, including one emphatically
explicit representation of the Pink Saber pleasing herself.
*Just the thing to tease Nene with,* she'd thought at the time,
but now Lisa was having some trouble imagining even admitting to
owning the print.

Then she shook herself and returned to work. *No daydreaming!*
she told herself sternly, and continued to craft her first work
of overt propaganda.

* * *

"The Original Ray's New York Pizza," Tinsel City. Monday,
November 24, 2036. 8:05 PM

>From his seat in the back of the pizzeria, Leon looked up and
watched the rain outside. It splattered fiercely against the
neon-lit windows, and lights from the other businesses on the
street shimmered in the puddles and rivulets it formed on the
street and the parked cars. A burst of storm-born white noise
mixed with the din of traffic would wash over the restaurant
every time a customer entered or exited, along with a cold blast
of wind and the scent of moist asphalt. He was grateful for the
cold air; it would shock him and bring him back to his senses
just often enough.

Glancing back down at the folder in his hands, Leon reflected
that it had been a wise choice to wait until he was out of the
office to start going over it. Even Daley might have accused him
of sneaking in some light science fiction reading had he perused
it in the squad room. He flipped back to the first of the many
xeroxed pages that were clipped into the black plastic file, and
shook his head as he reread that innocuous -- if obscure --
title: "Riding the Wave Function: Discovery and Profit Via
Quantum Interpenetration". The author, Daniel Ohara, Ph.D. this,
Ph.D. that, Ph.D. some other damned thing; a veritable alphabet
soup followed his name. And the date: May 13, 2026.

*Back when I was still working with Jeena,* he thought
irrelevantly.

In front of him was a paper plate upon which lay the crusts of
two slices of allegedly "New York-style" pizza; he picked up one
crust and began to gnaw on it as he flipped through the pages at
random. He had had to call in some favors to get his hands on
this third-generation photocopy, but it was worth it. What he
held was nothing less than the venture capital proposal that had
prompted GENOM to bankroll IDEC. And it explained exactly what
Ohara had thought he could do with the money and his specialty.

*Which was,* Leon threw the crust back down and shook his head
unbelievingly, *to punch holes into other universes and take what
they could find there.*

The proposal had made it clear that according to Ohara's best
case scenarios, all that could be brought back was information.
Actually transferring physical objects from one universe to
another was theoretically possible, but Ohara had claimed it
would be prohibitively expensive; Leon paged through the
photocopy until he found a passage which estimated the power
requirements for moving a 1-kilo mass at roughly a week's output
from the MegaTokyo municipal fusion plant. But Ohara had been
confident that they could create small "interpenetrations" that
could surreptitiously siphon copies of data streams from other
civilizations -- once certain technological obstacles were
overcome, of course -- with power costs several orders of
magnitude lower than that.

Leon couldn't help but be amazed. *God, what chutzpah! To
suggest finding a universe like "Star Trek" or "Nadesico" and
stealing its technological secrets!* Even more amazing to him
was the fact that GENOM thought it was worth pursuing. He
couldn't follow any of the math in the document, but apparently
it was quite convincing.

Knowing what he now knew, Leon was beginning to see a coherent
picture form from all the seemingly nonsensical details that had
accumulated since the end of June. Why Ohara was sent after the
Loon. Why GENOM wanted the Loon and kept obfuscating his
origins. And just possibly, who or *what* the Loon was.

Leon was beginning to understand the possible answers to his
questions... but he wasn't sure yet if he wanted to believe
them. Or even if he could. Either way, he needed to get this
information into the archive that Nene -- and the Sabers -- were
keeping for him. Maybe *they* could make more sense and better
use of its implications.

He forced himself to close the folder and think of other things,
before his brain exploded from the ideas that were shouldering
their way into his mind. There were other things to think about
-- like Priss finally coming home next week.

* * *

Wednesday, November 26, 2036. 7:41 PM

Well, so much for my analysis of the cycle of boomer "events."
At three weeks and counting, I decided that it had all been a
series of coincidences, and that I had simply had a run of good
luck in guessing how often rogue boomers went out on the town.
So I gave up on being nervous about when the next outbreak of
boomer violence would happen. If I were lucky, it wouldn't
happen at all.

If I were lucky.

In the mean time, I slouched comfortably through the lifestyle
that I had evolved since the summer. I'd been keeping busy with
my motorcycle, mainly. With a little cash and a lot of elbow
grease I restored the chrome to a like-new condition, and finally
gave it a proper paint job -- gloss black with classic flamework
along the gas tank(s). I'd also hacked together a crude
autopilot and installed it in the bike along with a radio relay
so I could remotely command it. Nothing fancy, just "start up",
"come here", "park yourself," that kind of thing.

Oh, and "change color."

A happy shipping accident at Ganbare in early November netted me
four liters of electrochromic "paint". This stuff was a lacquer-
like material that was normally transparent but could turn just
about any other single color with the application of the right
voltage. Related to both liquid crystal and "digital ink"
technologies, it got a lot of use in animated billboards and
other displays. Ganbare's tiny consumer products division used
the stuff to make high-end stereo components which would
automatically color-coordinate themselves with your apartment's
decor. It was hideously expensive, hard to make, and not readily
available to buyers outside of industrial markets.

A few cans of the stuff got shipped to our division by mistake.

As soon as I realized what it was and what it could do, I snagged
a can and hacked the invoices and shipping records to indicate
we'd received one less than had actually arrived. I smuggled it
home, stashed it in my workshop, and chuckled evilly. I had just
solved the last of my identity/security problems.

By this time I of course had legally registered and licensed my
motorcycle, which made the use for which I'd built it somewhat
hazardous to my freedom. Up to that point I had been using the
old dodge of muddying the plates on a regular basis so that they
couldn't be easily read. Even so, a search as broad as "model =
Mitsubishi AND year < 2025 AND color = black" followed by some
old-fashioned footwork would have eventually found me.

So I turned the bike into a chameleon.

I laid down an overcoat of the electrochromic stuff on every
painted surface of the bike *and* right over the license plates.
Then I wired it all up with a voltage regulator to both the
autopilot and a simple (but hidden) toggle switch. While the
current flowed, the paint shifted from its default clear to a
neutral grey that coordinated nicely with my uniform -- and
blanked out my license plates to boot. A rather cool effect, if
I say so myself.

I was active outside the workshop, too, don't worry. A gate
attempt about once every week or so eliminated three more songs
from the running. I managed to pry Lisa out of her work for
several nights of clubbing, which resulted in another half dozen
or so primo candidates for semi-permanent storage. And related
to that, I finally got around to sorting through all the
microtapes I'd accumulated over the past few months and dumping
those candidates to my helmet.

I was working on that very task one night when Lisa did her knock-
and-enter thing. "Forgive me for disturbing the harmony of the
house," she called out in her usual formal manner as she came in.
Given the matching (and of course fashionable) wool skirt and
jacket she wore, it looked like she had just come home from work.
She had a newspaper under one arm, too.

Fortunately, I didn't have my helmet out at that moment; I was
simply sorting through the microcassettes and deciding which held
keepers and which didn't. "Hey there," I said as I carefully
gathered the tapes and set them aside.

She removed her shoes -- yup, just come from work. She usually
took them off in her place and came over in stocking feet.
"Don't you ever lock your door?"

"Only when I'm out," I replied. "I can take care of anyone who
might try to break in while I'm here." Not an entirely unlikely
prospect, given the general economic stratum of the neighborhood.

"I'll bet you can. What's that?" she asked as she plopped
herself into the chair on the other side of the dinette from me.

"Part of my music collection." I grinned evilly. "Bootlegs from
the clubs you've taken me to."

"Ooooh," she said playfully, "I'm gonna tell my friend Priss, and
she'll beat you up!"

"Uh-huh, sure," I snorted. "So, what brings you by tonight,
Leese?"

"Oh, right. I wanted to show off my latest article!" Lisa
whipped out the newsfax and unfolded it with a grand flourish.
"Here!"

It was, I noted with some discomfort, yet another article about
the Knight Sabers and myself. Since I'd participated in that
fight, the papers had been full of them. I'd expected -- hell,
hoped -- that they would fade away after a week or less. But
with GENOM's recent bullshit press release claiming I was some
kind of over-enthusiastic boomer-hunting bot, the media coverage
revved back up and hadn't stopped.

I was a little disappointed that Lisa was a part of it all.

I gave the newsheet a quick once-over. A too-clear photo of me
from the end of October -- in full "Iceman" mode and surrounded
by the three Knights -- anchored the article, surmounted by a
rather uninspiring headline. The story itself took up about half
the tabloid-sized page. I looked over the top of the sheet at
Lisa. She wore this innocent, expectant look that I found a
little hard to believe, and not for the first time I wondered
just how good an actress she was.

To cover my sudden case of nerves, I harrumphed a bit, then said,
"You and the Knight Sabers again. What is this, your new
specialty?"

"*New* specialty?" She wrinkled her nose in an over-cutesy,
kittenish puzzlement, then shook her head. "No, I've been
following the Sabers since I was in high school. That's not new
for me. But this is." She reached over the top of the paper
tapped the photo.

"Huh? What is?" I tried to figure out how much of my face was
really visible in the photo behind the helmet and goggles. Like
I've said before, I've never really kept a secret identity at
home, and thoughts like that were relatively foreign to me.

"Him. The Loon."

I carefully suppressed my impulse to snap my head up and lock
eyes with her. "I thought he was called 'The Iceman'."

"I have a friend in the AD Police, remember?" I let myself look
up at Lisa as she tossed her head. "She says he calls himself
'Loon'."

"Does he?"

"Uh-huh. And my article is about all the different theories
people have about who he is and where he comes from. GENOM said
he's a prototype boomer, but then, GENOM said he was a boomeroid,
too, only a few months ago. Some people think he's a new Knight
Saber. Some people think he's an alien from another planet."
She snorted.

The back of my neck was tingling. Not quite my danger sense.
Not quite. "What do *you* think?"

She shrugged, not looking at me. "I think he's from another
world. *Some* kind of other world, at least."

*It doesn't mean anything,* I told myself, even though my heart
had started pounding double-time. I was pretty sure I was lying.

"You know," she continued, catching my eyes with hers and holding
them, "if I knew the Loon, I'd like to think he could confide in
me, you know? Someone he could share secrets with? But even if
he felt he couldn't, it wouldn't bother me. I mean, there might
be a really good reason not to tell things to someone like me,
you know? But *if* I knew someone like him *and* he needed his
privacy, whether or not he shared with me I'd certainly respect
that." Her eyes released mine, and she stood there in an
elaborately casual pose, watching me.

*Oh. Shit.* I got that cold stab of panic you get in your chest
when everything goes to hell all at once. *She knows. Obviously
not all, but enough. How the hell did she find out?* Then I
worked through what she said, and I considered what I'd learned
of her in the past four and a half months.

I pursed my lips and looked thoughtful. "I'm sure that if you
knew someone like him, he'd be very grateful for the, um,
personal space and privacy. He might not be ready right away to
talk about anything too, um, idiosyncratic, not yet. But I think
that when he were ready, you'd be just the kind of person he'd
entrust with his secrets."

That megawatt smile of hers lit up the room. "I'm glad you think
that," she said happily. "I'm glad." She turned to leave. As
she picked up her shoes by the door, she paused and looked back.
"*If* I knew the Loon, I'd also tell him to be careful. Not
because I didn't believe he could take care of himself, but
because I'd like to think he'd be the kind of friend I'd care a
lot about, and worry about. You know?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Yeah, I know. I'm sure he'd appreciate it."

She smiled again. "I'm glad." She gave a quick little wave.
"Ja!" And the door clicked behind her. I stared at it for
several minutes, motionless.

Then I started banging my head against the tabletop.

* * *

ADP Headquarters. Tuesday, December 2, 2036. 2:11 PM

A sweaty Leon all but staggered into the squad room.

Ramirez looked up from his desk. "You nail it, Inspector?"

Without looking, the inspector flung the head of a mannequin
boomer onto Ramirez' desk. The other officer toppled his chair
as he started backward in surprise. Then Ramirez glanced down at
the 100-yen-piece-sized hole in the middle of the blank
mechanical face, and a broad grin spread out underneath his heavy
mustache.

"Nailed it," Leon replied, his voice inflectionless with
exhaustion. Slowly he made his way to his desk and dropped
heavily into the chair there. With a shove he spun the monitor
around so he didn't have to see his waiting messages. Taking a
deep breath, he muttered to himself, "I'm getting too old for
this shit."

His phone rang. Sighing, Leon groped blindly for the monitor and
turned it back to face him before stabbing the "accept" button
with his fingertip. "McNichol," he grunted without actually
looking at the opening receive window.

"Well, *you're* looking good, loverboy," a familiar female voice.
"Been chasing the interns again?"

Leon snapped his head up to see a familar near-smile on the
monitor. "Priss!"

"Hello to you, too, Leon." Her tone was dry, but the smile
remained.

He exhaled heavily. "Sorry, just had a rough day. This giggling
maniac of a mannequin boomer led me and a squad all over town
before we took it down. I just got back into HQ this minute."

"Poor baby. Would a nice dinner help relax you?"

"Would it! I..." He stopped short. "You're back in town
early?"

She nodded. "Got back to my trailer mebbe an hour ago." She
paused for an almost imperceptible beat. "About that dinner?"

He peered suspiciously at the image on his screen. "Not that I'm
complaining, but you're awfully forward all of a sudden. What's
going on?"

Priss looked almost offended. "Nothing! I was just thinking we
could get together for dinner on my first night back from tour."
She glowered at him. "Not that it means we're *involved* or
anything, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You tell me every time we do something
together." Priss rolled her eyes, and Leon relented. "Okay,
where and when?"

"Arturo's, tonight, at eight. My treat."

Leon whistled. "You're really feeling generous, aren't you?
What brought this on?"

Priss actually grinned. "The tour. We're *so* flush from the
new soundrom sales, I figured I could splurge a little."

"Already? Congratulations! I want to hear all about it over
dinner."

"Oh, you will, loverboy, you will. See you then."

"Right. Bye, Priss."

"'Bye." Her image flickered out, followed by the window which
had framed it.

Leon leaned back, a broad, giddy smile on his face and his
exhaustion forgotten. *Today is a *good* day,* he thought.

* * *

Tinsel City. Saturday, December 6, 2036. 8:41 PM

By my personal clock and calendar, I was four months away from
Christmas. But I didn't let that stop me from celebrating along
with the rest of MegaTokyo when the local date rolled around to
December.

I like starting Christmas early -- like right after Thanksgiving.
(What can I say? I'm just a big kid at heart.) I was a little
late this time. I only got around to buying my tree on the first
weekend of the month, although I'd bought all my decorations
already. I'd've invited Lisa to join me in the sacred tradition,
but she was off visiting her mother (a task that, judging from
her expression, she did not look forward to, but felt obligated
to perform). So I had to go tree shopping alone.

You'd be surprised how many lots filled with Christmas trees you
can find in MegaTokyo in December. Back home, I'd've had to go
to Tokyo's "Gaijin Ghetto" to find any hints of Christmas --
Japanese Christians being more or less undercover to avoid
trouble with the more fanatical of their Nationalist neighbors.
Here, I could find them almost as frequently as I might in London
or even New York.

Anyway, I was wrestling this nearly two-meter Douglas fir into my
apartment when my ADP scanner went off. As I leaned the tree up
against the wall and pulled the brand-new stand from its factory
packaging, I listened to the alert carefully. It'd been five,
almost six, weeks since the last bot incident that needed my
attention -- the ADP could and did easily handle the occasional
"mannequin" and construction boomers that popped up, and I didn't
even count the mannequins when I tried to map out the cycle of
boomer events. So I was not expecting to be needed, really.

Of course, when you get complacent...

As soon as I heard the count of boomers I'd flung open my
wardrobe and grabbed my duty uniform. Rogue mannequins and
builderbots were almost always solo. Only warbots showed up in
packs, damn them. Then I heard the word "superboomer" and combat-
hyped just to finish changing. I'd read about those mothers.
The ADP dispatcher reporting "officers down" just encouraged me
to go a little faster.

I was already suited up and opening the door when Dispatch
announced that there were civilians trapped in the combat zone.
I slammed the door shut and ran full speed for the stairwell.

Bounding my way down to the basement, I formulated and discarded
battle plans, starting from priority one: rescue the civilians.
By the time I flung the garage door open, I'd come up with one
that would get the civs out of danger and maybe give me a chance
against the rest. If the reduced roster of Knight Sabers showed
up, it would be lots easier, but I wasn't going to count on that.

If I were going to save the non-combatants, I was going to have
to get there *fast*. Cycle turbine whining, garage door shut
behind me, and safety straps secured around me, I said, "System.
Load song 'I Can't Drive 55'. Play song."

I combat-hyped again, and I was off.

* * *

"Damned skyscrapers," Doc Raven muttered angrily from his seat at
the controls of the Knightwing. He did not relish his position
as acting pilot while Mackie was still in Germany. "Damned
reporters! There's no room to put you down on the street close
enough to the action."

"We'll take a roof and jump down, then," Sylia replied calmly.

"They'll see you coming," the old man warned.

"Like they haven't already noticed the Knightwing?" Priss
muttered.

"We have no other choice." Sylia glanced at the others, who
returned her gaze with confident looks of their own.

"All right," Raven grumbled. "It's your heads. Coming up on the
Glory Bank building. Prepare to deploy on my mark... coming to
hover... opening bay doors... Mark!"

A moment later, Sylia's voice crackled "Sabers away!" on the
encrypted link as the four armored figures landed lightly on the
roof below. Raven gunned the turbofans and the Knightwing shot
up into the dark sky like a frightened bird.

Sylia said nothing as she made a quick survey of the scene. Not
good. The street was a disaster area. The larger buildings
would survive the damage, but some of the smaller ones were
already ruins. At least a dozen civilians were trapped in a half-
destroyed coffee shop. There were three newsvans parked where
she could see them, and twice as many camera crews were deployed
in the street below, dangerously close to both the ADP forces and
the rampaging boomers. And the boomers... Sylia frowned. Eight
65Cs, and dear gods, a superboomer. Even at this distance, the
superboomer had already detected the Sabers and was directing the
attention of the others their way.

Even as she took all this in, another part of her mind was
scanning the nearby buildings and mapping out their route down to
the street. "This way," she said, and the four leaped down to
the next lower roof.

"Sylia, I'm getting that signal again!" Nene cried as they
landed, then leapt again. "Spoof program's accepting,
replying..."

The four bounded down from rooftop to rooftop.

"Bingo!" she yelled triumphantly. "Connect, acknowledge, and I'm
in! Looks like I have complete access, too! Am I good or what?"
She was silent for a moment as they landed on the last rooftop,
then, "Hey, here're a couple of audio feeds..." There was a snap
and a hiss as she fed an additional channel into their link. The
sound of quiet, regular breathing, followed by a click, and a
familiar male voice, in English: "<System. Combat mode on. I'm
a pioneer. Play.>" And then, music -- a short piano and
synthesizer intro, a dozen or so notes long, followed by a thin,
ethereal voice, singing in English.

"<Did you know I am a pioneer?
I'm out on a secret mission,
I travel the galaxy and far beyond...>"

"Wha...?" grunted Priss, as Linna said, "Hey!"

"More music," mused Sylia. "Interesting..."

Then the thunder began. Crack after chest-pounding crack of
thunder, a second or two apart at the most, coming from no
visible source in the street below. The few remaining intact
windows overlooking the combat zone shattered with the first
blast; a rain of glass shards showered the camera crews below as
they ran for cover. All of the cyberdroids save the superboomer
were bowled over by its intensity, and the civilians...

Sylia was stunned to see that with every other peal of thunder,
there were fewer civilians caught in the rubble of the
coffee shop. Almost as an afterthought, Sylia noted that the
music from their mysterious helper had gone into a pounding
orchestral overdrive, its beat almost coinciding with the
thunder.

"Sylia," Nene's voice was quavering with what might have been
shock and disbelief, "I have a sporadic LADAR trace on something
moving -- this can't be -- moving back and forth at at least Mach
6 between that coffee shop and..." She scanned the skyline, then
pointed. "There!"

Sighting on the building top Nene indicated, Sylia raised the
magnification on her visor to full. By twos and threes, with
every other blast of sound, the civilians were appearing on top
of the office building. They seemed dazed and stunned, but
otherwise unharmed. *Unharmed? By something that grabbed them
and moved them at six times the speed of sound? They should be
bloody smears!*

"Sylia!" Linna shouted as the last peal of thunder faded into
echoes. Sylia snapped her attention back to the boomers, to find
them facing --

Facing the Loon, dressed in his trademark motorcycle leathers and
helmet, a scant ten meters in front of the cyberdroids. He was
floating two meters off the ground. Quietly, the song on the
audio feed continued.

"<Can't you see that I am a pioneer,
Unlocking the greatest myst'ries?
My key is a fearless heart
So pure and strong.
People laugh when you are a pioneer,
Not walking the straight and narrow.
They tell you the way things are,
They swear you're wrong.>"

Loon studied the superboomer, and seemed to regard it balefully
for a moment. His breath was still quiet and even. A muttered
"<You and me, warbot. You and me,>" crackled through Nene's
illicit audio link.

"<You can't be a hero
Hiding underneath your bed,
Got to live the life
You create inside your head...>"

Then he was in motion. From a dead stop to human meteor in a
blink of an eye, Loon hurtled at the superboomer. Hands
outstretched, he tore off a set of eye-sensor spars as he shot
by. He looped up into a barrel roll to dive down on the confused
cyberdroid as it and the other boomers tried to target him, but
he dodged and wove in a complex spiral path that avoided their
fire and brought him back to within arm's reach of his target.
His right arm blurred, and with the crack of a small sonic boom
one of the cyberdroid's weapons pods shattered.

He did an impossible right-angle turn and shot straight up as
the superboomer activated its own flight systems. It jetted after
him, only to find itself far outclassed in raw speed. Far above,
Loon soared higher and faster, then spun on a dime to plunge
straight back down.

"<So I opened the window
Caught the wind one night.
Now I sail with the birds
In their flight...>"

Loon howled past the superboomer and slapped its outstretched
arm, snapping the hand off at the wrist and sending the
cyberdroid into a wild spin as the human's flight path leveled
out. It roared its outrage as it tried to regain flight control,
its jets screaming in protest. Yellow fluid sprayed wildly about
the street as the broken hand clattered to the ground.

In the distance, more windows shattered as Loon reversed his
flight path with an inertia-confounding 180-degree spin and
returned to the site of the battle heralded by another
thunderclap. With him came a hurricane gust of wind that sent
the newsvans rocking wildly on their suspensions and forced the
ADP to hold on tightly to their vehicles as the camera crews
stumbled for cover.

Sylia shook herself out of utter amazement and barked, "Nene!
Full record on him! I want *everything*! Everyone else, let's
go! There're still more boomers, and we're wasting time
gawking!"
Without looking at the others, she launched herself into one last
jet-assisted leap that took her down into the middle of the
remaining boomers. With the civilians out of danger and the AD
Police falling back, their options were at their maximum, and she
intended to make the best use of them.

As she landed, she deployed her blades and attacked. A quick
swipe wounded one of the boomers, but she missed a second as it
activated its own flight systems and took to the air.

Behind her, she heard a tell-tale metallic "ping-thunk".
"Getting sloppy without me, Sylia?" Priss grunted as the white
Saber turned to see a third boomer pitch forward onto its face,
its metallic skull neatly skewered by one of the blue Saber's
railgun spikes. On the other side of the street, Linna was
neatly dismembering another with her monoribbons. *So much for
the improved model,* Sylia allowed herself to think smugly. Then
a sudden glint of light from overhead caught her eye, and without
thinking she threw herself to the left. The superboomer's
pectoral laser array vaporized a wide swath of the road where she
had been standing.

As the acrid odor of molten asphalt worked its way through to her
nostrils, a muttered "<Out of my way, tinkertoy!>" came over
the audio link. There was another crack of thunder overhead, and
the array beam was wrenched away. Sylia risked a look up. The
Loon had grabbed the superboomer's leg, and was dragging it up
into the sky above the city at an astounding rate of speed. As
it struggled to break free of his hold, the cyberdroid launched a
wild hail of point-blank laserfire at Loon that Sylia was not
surprised to see miss widely.

A moment later, Loon and the boomer vanished into the night sky.

Meanwhile, a rain of broken boomer parts and more yellow fluid
showered down around them; the one 65C that had joined the
superboomer in the air had apparently been destroyed -- quite
thoroughly so. Then another boomer charged her, and she was
engaged again.

Softly, below the noise of combat, the song continued,
relentlessly optimistic and upbeat. It was beginning to get on
Sylia's nerves.

"<Some may say we're safer here.
Never mind them, be a pioneer!>"

* * *

Gotta hand it to that fan club of mine back home. They do find
me the damnedest songs. That one, for instance, was the English
translation of the theme to some Japanese TV show, and I *liked*
it. Not only did it give me multi-Mach flight, but complete
spaceworthiness and hyperflight as well. (Of course, FTL speed
is pretty useless when it lasts only five minutes and seven
seconds... But I digress.) Of course, there were certain minor
side-effects to going Mach 1 or better down a city street, but I
think a little broken glass isn't too much to pay to stop rogue
warbots, don't you? And I wasn't going fast enough to cause
actual structural damage to the buildings.

I think.

Anyway. The primary threat was the superboomer. In addition to
its own respectable arsenal, it was almost certainly acting as a
field commander for the lesser bots. I had no doubts the Knights
could handle what was left of the rest of those with ease. So I
decided to take care of the big fucker. Between my field and my
polykev I figured I stood a pretty good chance of shrugging off
most of what it could throw at me, so I grabbed it by one leg and
starting taking it up.

At first it tried to struggle and break free, loosing most of its
weaponry on me and at the same time burning jets to try to
counteract my pull. As I'd hoped, most of its attacks bounced,
and what was left didn't get through my armor; and between the
thrust both of us were putting out and the fact that I was
cloaked by the song's variable-inertia effect, the superboomer
ended up exhausting whatever it used for jet fuel. It tried to
kick me, and even contorted itself to swipe at me with its
remaining hand. The kick missed, but I took a nasty blow to the
hip that got through both my field and the polykev, and hurt like
hell.

So I let go of its leg.

By that time we were nearly at the edge of the atmosphere. Below
me, MegaTokyo was a webwork of golden lights punctuated by a set
of concentric rings around a central glow that had to be the
GENOM Cone. The whole thing wrapped around the vast, glimmering
darkness that was Tokyo Bay. The wildly-flailing superboomer
overlaid on the almost abstract image of the city made such a
*lovely* composition. I spent a second or two hovering there,
admiring both the city and the sense of palpable panic that the
bot managed to project as it plummeted away from me.

*Forgot you ran out of fuel for your jets, eh, bunky?*

Even falling, it still tried to blast me with assorted weaponry.
Too bad that dropping from 150 kilometers up in almost non-
existent atmosphere when it has no flight capability really fucks
up a warbot's aim, especially when it's shooting at a mutant with
an improbability field.

I counted to ten.

Then I said, "Going down!" and took off after it.

After giving up on hitting me, the superboomer rolled face-down
and spread its limbs sky-diver style. I came up from
behind/above, matched speeds with it, planted my hands in the
small of its back, and let out the throttle again.

I accelerated to my full atmospheric speed, nearly breaking the
boomer in half. (I had actually expected it to snap under the
stress, after the way its hand had come off earlier, but the
torso structure was apparently far more resilient. I guess that
with boomers, as with humans, hands are delicate things.) As an
envelope of ionized air formed around me, the boomer started to
glow from air friction -- first a faint cherry-blossom pink, then
a red like the core of a burning charcoal briquette. It stopped
struggling around the time its limbs began to melt and trail
little droplets of molten boomer behind us.

As we fell, I kept nudging our course to make sure we stayed over
the bay. Five or six kilometers above the water, I let go of
the boomer's remains. Almost immediately, air friction slowed
the glowing mass down to just over 200 kph -- terminal velocity.
Angling down to one side, I put on a a modest burst of speed to
outrace it; twelve full seconds before it hit the surface of the
bay, I reached the water first.

* * *

Nene swore mild curse words under her breath. She'd managed to
trigger some kind of burst transmission from what looked like the
remote system's diagnostics programs, but a few seconds after the
Loon dragged the superboomer off into the sky, the signal
attenuated and vanished. As she reluctantly turned all her
attention to the less-than-challenging job of jamming the
remaining 65Cs, she looked upward.

*Wow. A meteor. A bright one, too, if I can see it through the
light pollution... It looks almost like it's coming straight...
down...*

Ping. A familiar signal requested connection. Ping. The spoof
program responded. Ping.

*Oh, no.*

"Sylia!"

* * *

There are times when I envy Hexe's ability to go non-corp when
she flies at multi-Mach speeds; an intangible spirit-form comes
in very handy when you need to go very fast but don't want to
cause incalculable property damage.

This was not one of those times.

Racing around the edge of the bay, I sketched a ring around the
boomer's impact point at almost my full atmospheric flight speed.
I was skimming the surface of the choppy water, the wall of air
that I pushed in front me plowing physically through the freezing
waves. At the speed I was traveling, the trough I made had no
time to collapse in upon itself before I looped back and flew the
circle anew.

Behind me, a shockwave ballooned in both the air and the water.
One side of it, the outside, weakened as it expanded. It
eventually washed over and rattled the shore, certainly breaking
a few more windows and damaging weaker buildings. No help for
that now...

On the *inside*, though, the other half of the shockwave rushed
inwards, stronger than the first by virtue of being focused and
channeled into an ever-tightening circle, and because I kept
zooming around it, digging an ever deeper "ditch" in the water
with the pressure wave I drove ahead of me.

It reached the center of that circle at about the same time that
the superboomer-cum-meteor did.

* * *

The thunderclap was heard over the entire city. It rattled
windows as far inland as the USSD National Headquarters building.

The pillar of steam exploded upwards for hundreds of meters
before striking a thick layer of cold air and spreading out to
turn the clear winter night into an overcast one.

A solid sheet of water erupted around the pillar, cloaking the
steam for a moment in a translucent grey-green cylinder, before
roaring back down upon the bay like a phantom waterfall.

A hot rain of mud and worse substances showered down upon the
remains of Aqua City and on the industrial districts surrounding
the bay.

But the expected mini-tsunami never struck the shore.

* * *

On top of the RCA-Sanyo ("A GENOM Company") building in Tinsel
City, Tony Nakamura lowered his binoculars and shivered despite
his winter coat. "So..." he rasped, then swallowed to moisten
his dry, uncooperative throat and tried again. "S-So much for
Illya's worries about that superboomer." Still shaking, he
turned to his companion. "D-Did you get all that?"

"Everything up to the point where the Visitor exceeded
approximately four kilometers' altitude, Nakamura-san," said the
technician quietly from where she sat behind a mound of portable
instrumentation. "We weren't expecting," she paused to gulp,
"um, any kind of flight capability, so we lost our lock on him a
couple of seconds after he, um, flew away with the superboomer."
She paused. "We got it back right after the impact. The
Visitor's returning to the site of the combat, now, at a rather
leisurely velocity. Compared to what he was just doing, that
is."

"Did we get any usable data?"

The tech took a deep breath. "Well, sir, the Visitor seems...
resistant to scans. But the new grav-field sensors indicate that
he had and still has a zero mass. That would mean no inertia,
which would explain his maneuvering ability and acceleration."

Tony nodded absently as he considered the scientific implications
of a man-portable inertialess flight system with no visible
exhaust and capable of instant Mach speeds -- at the very least.
"Keep recording." He shook his head. It was enough to make him
believe in UFOs.

* * *

I wish I could take credit for that maneuver, but it wasn't mine.
Back in 1987, long before he had to leave the team on medical
disability, Shockwave had used a similar trick to contain the
concussion wave from an FAE that one of Arcanum's catspaws had
set off near Jerusalem. The circular trough, though, was my
addition to the stunt -- a way to damp down or maybe even cancel
out entirely the monster wave that would have raced out across
the harbor from the point of impact. Since I had the moves, I
stole Shockwave's trick and hoped I could make it work with my
modifications. Fortunately for MegaTokyo's harbor district, I
could.

Anyway, I had managed to outrace the mud shower, and both the
condensation and the bay water had long since evaporated off of
me. With the last 30 seconds or so of the song left I looped
back up and over to the street where the Sabers were mopping up
the remaining boomers. I would have gone straight home had I not
driven the cycle there. I couldn't very well have had the bike
drive itself home; that would have been a little obvious...

I did a quick survey of the scene from a couple stories up.
Although the ADP forces were still staying back out of the combat
zone, they looked a little antsy. The Knights were making short
work of the remaining boomers, even without their funky wearable
robots. That didn't mean the scene was safe; it was still a live-
fire zone.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a nearly-dead bot that had
been playing possum and lining up a "final strike" shot on the
Pink Knight with its mouth cannon. I dropped down and scooped
her up, grabbing the Knight Saber under the arms and yanking her
into the air just in time. "Heads up, Pink," I said as she
flailed about and shrieked loud enough to hear through her helm.
Below us, the laser lanced through where she had been standing,
splashing on and searing the wall beyond. Pink suddenly went
limp in my arms. "Our lesson for today, boys and girls," I
lectured in mid-air, "is *always* watch your six."

Hovering, I spun in place with her to eyeball the boomer. White
had quickly come up and decapitated it, so I lowered my passenger
back to the street near her late would-be attacker. The timer in
my HUD was emphatically flashing red as the song entered its last
ten seconds.

"You... flew... lifted... how?" Pink stammered, the voder on her
suit turning her confusion into a staccato buzz.

"Happy thoughts and pixie dust." I grinned and threw her a mock
salute as I set my feet back on the ground. Then I nodded to the
White Knight. "Lady White."

"Loon-san," she replied as the others drew near.

"Good evening, Lady Olive," I said, bowing. "I'm sorry that we
did not get to dance again tonight."

I was delighted when Olive actually managed a graceful curtsey in
her armor. "Another time, Loon-san."

"What do you mean, dance?" growled the fourth.

I reached out, grabbed the manipulator on the end of her right
arm before she could yank it back, and began pumping it
vigorously. "Lady Blue, a pleasure to meet you again on better
terms. I'm glad to see you were only on a sabbatical instead of
having quit the team, as the newspapers had suggested. I trust
you enjoyed your vacation?"

"Huh? When did we meet?" she demanded.

"At a club called Hot Legs, some months ago? I thought you were
the owner of the boomer that I had taken down, and you probably
thought I was a boomer myself."

"So that *was* you with the baseball bat?"

"None other."

"Nice work."

"Thanks."

"How did you do that thing with the railgun spikes?" Pink asked.

I shrugged. "Strange things just happen around me."

"*That's* putting it mildly," Olive muttered. I grinned at her,
then looked past her.

"Huh. Looks the ADP's finally gotten their courage up," I said,
and it was true -- they had come out from behind their improvised
barricades and were now heading our way, the redoubtable
Inspector Wong at their head along with some other fellow wearing
a leather jacket and ain't-I-cool shades. The news crews were
following close behind. "I'm not in the mood to deal with them
right now, so I think I'll be going." I looked around at all
four of the Knights. "Nice working with you all again."

White inclined her head slightly as I stepped back and away from
them. "<System. "Magic Carpet Ride". Play,>" I said to the
computer. Steppenwolf tore into the song, and the small oriental
rug came into being under my feet.

"Hey, you!" the bruiser in the shades shouted, and began to run.
"Don't move!"

"<'No can do, Mrs. C.,'>" I called out to the ADP goons through
the helmet's PA. "Gotta fly, ladies. Some other time..." At my
mental command, the rug rose from the ground, lifting me into the
air. "Oh, and Pink Lady?" I called down. "Say hi to Jeff for
me."

"Huh?" she riposted. I chuckled to myself. I didn't think she'd
get the reference.

With a jaunty wave, I and my flying carpet took off into the
night. As I sped away, I noticed the Knights were making
themselves scarce as well, leaping up onto buildings with jet
assists that had been cleverly hidden in their armor. I
accelerated towards the Canyons as a little misdirection before I
dropped to street level again, and doubled back to where I had
stashed my bike.

It was only then that I noticed the message in the HUD from the
helmet's network telecomm system.

* * *

Saturday, December 6, 2036. 9:45 PM

Back in the familiar briefing room, the Knight Sabers ran their
usual post-mission analysis. Still stinging from Sylia's rebuke
over a month ago, Lisa had come straight here after the initial
alert. But based on the news coverage and the Sabers' pre-
meeting chatter, she wished she had disobeyed Sylia again. As
the Sabers' leader continued to critique both tactics and
performance, Lisa surreptitiously opened a small window to a news
site and followed the coverage of the 'meteor' which had struck
the bay.

It wasn't until they had come almost to the end of the analysis
that Lisa returned her attention to the debriefing, when Sylia
asked, "Nene, any preliminary results from your scans of the
Loon?"

Nene, whose eyes had begun to glaze over, perked up then shook
her head. "Nothing that makes sense. Physically there's nothing
different from any other scan we've done of him. And that's the
problem! He was flying -- at Mach 6! -- with no heat, no
exhaust, no energy signatures, nothing! And no inertia! If I
hadn't seen it -- if he hadn't *picked me up* -- I wouldn't've
believed it." She shook her head despairingly. "It defies all
physical laws. It's impossible. But it happened."

Unperturbed, Sylia nodded, then asked, "And what did you get from
the Loon's system? I *am* correct in presuming it was his?"

Relieved by the change to a less inexplicable topic, Nene
brightened and nodded. "Yup, it's his, all right. When he...
when he flew away with the superboomer, the signal disappeared.
It came back when he did."

She pulled a data disk from a pocket. Holding it up, she
continued. "I triggered some kind of automatic diagnostic and
report routine. I think. It sent what looks like a huge system
report, plain text, in a burst-mode transmission. Fortunately,
it used a standard compression algorithm, so I could open it
right up. I've only browsed it, but it doesn't look too cryptic.
It's in English, though, and some of it doesn't make much sense."

Sylia nodded again. "Go on."

Nene got up and stepped to Lisa's duty station at the computers
to take a seat next to the blonde in one of the rolling chairs
there. She dropped the disk into the drive slot on the terminal
in front of her and called up a window holding what looked like a
technical readout. Lisa rose from her seat to stand looking over
her friend's shoulder.

"It looks superficially like a pretty standard report -- at
first," Nene said, her back to the others. "There's a system
summary at the top -- but that's actually where it starts getting
strange. The OS is apparently called 'Loonix 3.1' -- no doubt
it's his, huh? -- and it's copyrighted 1995, by, get this, 'L.
Toons/Warriors International'."

She looked up at Sylia. "Sounds like the name of a mercenary
outfit. Ever hear of them?"

Sylia frowned and shook her head. "I can't say that I have, but
that doesn't mean anything. I will make some inquiries later."

Nene turned back to the monitor. "Okay. Next are the hardware
specs. And frankly, before tonight I wouldn't have believed
them. But if he can fly under his own power, who's to say what
his computer is like?" She shrugged. "If these numbers are
accurate, it's at least the equivalent of a mainframe, if not
more. Depends on how much overhead 'Loonix 3.1' imposes. Any
way you look at it, though, it's *powerful*. And it's obviously
portable -- I have no idea where he's carrying it, which means
it's gotta be *tiny*."

She scrolled through the listing. "Listen to what it handles,
too. It's got radio telecomm for multiple voice and data
channels, multimedia capacity, voice recognition, tactical
displays that get projected somehow, maybe on the goggles he
wears, and a good-sized text database that seems to be all about
the United Nations circa 1998, but Sylia, here's where it gets
*really* weird. Ninety percent of this computer is a jukebox!"

Sylia raised an eyebrow, as Linna and Priss both made noises of
surprise. "Explain."

Nene displayed a flowchart. "There is one *big* data warehouse
connected to the system, and it's all audio files, encoded in old-
style MP4. Each file is tagged in a database that indexes the
songs by title, artist, composer, lyricist, subject, themes *and*
by every word of the lyrics. There's a status report for a
retrieval mechanism that can be controlled either by voice or by
some kind of keyed commands, that will either play a given song
or throw its lyrics up on the tactical display." She sighed.
"Sylia, part of this report is a complete list of over three
thousand songs stored and indexed in that system. Add that to
everything else this says is available online to him, and I have
no idea where or how he could be carrying that much storage, even
with the latest memory solids!"

"And why would a jukebox have a 'combat mode'?" Sylia mused
aloud, remembering what they'd overheard. "This is quite
bizarre, to say the least."

"There's something else odd, too." Priss had joined Lisa in
leaning over Nene, staring at the display as a listing of the
data warehouse scrolled by. "These songs he's got -- they're all
old. I don't see anything recorded more recently than about 35
years ago here. Our boy Loon's got a taste for golden oldies."

"Curious." Sylia found herself growing increasingly intrigued by
the mystery. "Again, the late 1990s. Nene, didn't you say the
clock on that system is set to a date some 35 years ago?"

"Yeah! It was, um, 2001." The redhead glanced at her. "Why?
Do you think it means something?"

Careful consideration showed in Sylia's eyes. "Perhaps. I'm not
certain yet, but it seems unlikely to be a coincidence."

"And... Hey, wait! Run that back, Nene," Priss demanded.

"What?" Nene frantically paged up until Priss thrust a finger at
the screen.

"There!"

"There what?" Nene crinkled her nose in confusion as she read
the line under Priss's fingertip. "'Beverly's Dandelion Wine',
the Beatles, 1974? What about it?"

Linna stepped over to the computer and craned her neck around
Priss to get her own look. "Yeah, what's wrong?"

Priss rolled her eyes. "If you spent less time with your head in
a computer monitor, Little Miss Cyberpunk, you'd know what about
it."

"Hey!" Lisa rose to Nene's defense, but Priss ignored her.

"The Beatles broke up in 1971, right after the Revolver Tour.
They didn't get back together again until just before Sir Paul
McCartney's death in 1983." The singer stabbed her finger at the
screen again. "And they never recorded any song by that title,
least of all in 1974!"

"Are you sure, Priss?" Linna swiveled to face her.

Priss rolled her eyes again, this time more elaborately, and
grimaced. "Of course I'm sure."

Sylia stood back and watched the interplay between the four with
her face carefully composed in a neutral mask.

"How do you know?" Nene asked.

Priss pulled out one of the rolling chairs and straddled it
backwards. She took a deep breath. "What do you do if you want
to be a concert pianist?"

Lisa stopped short at the apparent non sequitur.

"You practice a lot?" Nene ventured.

"You study, too," Linna said, straightening up and favoring Priss
with an odd, contemplative look.

Priss nodded. "Right, Linna. You study. You learn what's been
done before, who wrote it, who performed it, and how they played
it. When you know how others do what they do, you can go ahead
and do it your own special way."

Nene's nose crinkled up again. "I don't get it." Linna chuckled
and bopped her gently on the head. "What?" she cried.

"You're being dense, Nene," the dancer chastised.

Lisa shook her head. "I don't get it either."

"Look, you two, did you think I just got up on a stage one day
and decided to sing retrothrash, right out of the blue?" Priss
rested her chin on the top of the chair back.

Nene furrowed her brow. "Well, didn't you?"

"Nope." Priss unbent from the console, stretching and twisting
to work kinks out of her back. "I studied and trained, just like
Linna did to be a dancer." A glint of comprehension shone in
Lisa and Nene's eyes, and Linna nodded. "Not as formally as her,
more like the way you learned to be a hacker, Nene, but I
studied. And I learned. Along the way I learned how to learn,
and how to teach. And I learned about who and what came before
the music I wanted to sing. Retrothrash is just the latest stage
in the long evolution of rock'n'roll music, and I took it all in.
The only way to know how to take music where I want it to go is
to know where it's been."

Priss leaned backwards and stared up at the ceiling, her arms
stretched to their limit by their grip on the back of the chair.
"So *that's* how come I'm so sure the Beatles never recorded a
song in 1974."

The room was silent for several moments.

"Huh. Is that the only strange thing in the list?" Lisa asked.

Linna nodded thoughtfully. "That's a very good question."

"Hmmm. Let's find out," Nene said with a gleam in her eyes. She
spun around in her chair, back to the computer console. Her
hands flew over the keyboard in a ratatattat of furious typing.

"Nene," Lisa asked, bending over the redhead, "What are you
doing?"

"Freaking out, just like I always said she would," Priss teased
good-naturedly.

"Shush, Priss," Linna admonished.

"Just a moment," Nene murmured, hands bursting into another
flurry of typing. "Almost done... There!"

Lisa leaned over to look at the screen; it didn't look any
different -- still a list of titles, names and dates -- and
screwed up her face in puzzlement. "What did you do?"

Nene waved at the monitor. "I just did a comp/diff redline
between the list of songs in the Loon's computer and the Net
Music Project's database. After I dumped anything that was in
both the Project's db and the list, this is what's left. Check
this out!"

"What have you found, Nene?" Sylia asked from where she stood
apart from the others.

"A *lot* of anomalies. Look!"

The other four crowded around the console.

"Are you sure about this, Nene?"

"The Project's db is about as complete as you can get; they use
it to check copyrights and licensing, even for independent acts
like the Replicants, who don't have a contract with anyone.
Yeah, I'm sure."

The room was filled with a cacophony of voices as the five women
stared at the computer screen.

"Who's Pat Benatar? I like the sound of 'Hit Me With Your Best
Shot'."

"I never heard of 'Maxwell and his Demons'."

"What the hell's a 'Deathtongue'?"

"Oh, cool, he's got some T. Rex!"

"What's T. Rex, Priss?"

"Billy and the Boingers? Interesting."

"Weird, he doesn't have 'Under An Alhambra Moon' by the Eagles,
but he's got something else instead called 'Hotel California'
that I've never heard of."

"I'm not sure I want to know what kind of music a 'Weird Al'
Yankovic would do..."

"I wonder what 'Gossamer Axe' and 'Rockshasa' sound like."

"Anyone ever hear of 'I Want To Fly Like Silverbolt,' by the
Kinks? Or 'Bamboo Man' by Howl The Eternal Yes?"

For fifteen minutes, they poured over the list that Nene had
generated. Some of the entries were familiar titles that had
included abbreviations, others were simply misspelled. Even
after eliminating those, though, there were a number of surprises
among the remainder.

"Damn that little bastard!" Priss swore as Lisa nodded to
herself. "He's been bootlegging!" No less than a dozen of the
songs Nene had extracted were actually the works of local bands --
including Priss and the Replicants -- that were not in the
international database because they were not (yet) official
releases. They'd been carefully tagged with dates that, as far
as Priss could recollect, coincided with club gigs for the
various bands within the last six months.

Linna grinned. "Well, we know what he does with his free time,
now."

Nene giggled. Priss continued to fume, much to the others'
amusement.

"But that's so strange," Lisa said, her finger on the entry for
"Konya wa Hurricane". "Why would these all be tagged as 'Local
Date' this and 'Local Date' that? And Western dates, too. It's
not like you can go anywhere on the planet where the Western-
style date is *different* from anywhere else, is it?" Here was
another piece to the puzzle that was Doug. And damn it all, she
couldn't see what it meant.

Linna trailed her fingertips across the screen. "It's almost
like what you'd expect of a time traveler, isn't it?" she mused.
"I mean, if you could travel in time and you took records, you'd
have to put the date *then* on them, not the date you came from,
right?"

Lisa frowned. "If he's a time traveler, he'd have to be from the
past. Otherwise he'd have to have songs from the future, too,
wouldn't he?" An idea danced right at the edges of her brain,
something that would tie all of this together -- but it refused
to come into the front of her mind where she could see it.
Something about Doug. No. Something she'd *said* to Doug...

In her seat Priss growled. "I'm starting to think this is some
kind of joke."

Nene shook her head. "No, that doesn't make sense. Why hide the
joke behind so much protection that no one could find it? It's
got to be real."

Linna still gazed thoughtfully at the monitor. "He's *like* a
time traveler," she murmured. "But it's like he's from the wrong
past..."

Nene's eyes widened. "Oh my god. IDEC!"

"What?" four voices chimed.

Switching to the secure system, Nene began once again to type
frantically. A window opened, then a second, then a third as she
spun through virtual page after virtual page. "They're the high-
tech GENOM subsidiary which is after the Loon. Leon got his
hands on this paper written by their CEO that shook him up. He
gave it to me a week or so ago to add to that file on the Loon
that I've been, um," she laughed nervously, "holding onto for
him, and after scanning it in I browsed it to see what was so
awful about it." She shrugged as she paged rapidly through a
file. "I thought it was all just science-fictiony junk, but...
Okay, here." A swipe of the mouse, and a passage near the end of
the file appeared highlighted on the screen. "Read this."

Lisa was the closest, and leaned in to see the screen. "'In
short, the existence of other universes is not merely theory, it
is proven fact. The Inter-Dimensional Explorations Company will
take advantage of this fact and the revolutionary discoveries of
Dr. Daniel Ohara to 'harvest' both pure knowledge and mature
technologies from other Earths for the benefit of our own.'"
*Oh, gods. That explains everything. Doug's...*

Nene turned to face the others, crossing her arms over her chest.
"There you have it. The Loon isn't a boomer, he isn't a
boomeroid, and he isn't an alien. At least not the kind from
outer space. He's a human being -- or something close to one --
from another universe, from an Earth similar to but not exactly
like ours. And he was probably brought here accidentally by
IDEC, which has been in business for ten years now and presumably
has perfected whatever process this Ohara came up with." With a
smug expression on her face, Nene gave a curt nod, as if to say,
"So there!"

"Bullshit!" Priss exclaimed as Linna and Lisa exchanged glances --
Linna's was uncertain, and Lisa's was concerned.

Sylia, on the other hand, looked thoughtful. "It would explain
many things about him, though I wonder at the unlikeliness of it.
An Earth not yet out of the 1990s, but possessing a technology
that is practically magic, judging by what we've witnessed. How
is it possible for his world to be as similar to ours as his
language fluencies and that list of songs suggest, yet be so much
more advanced technologically?"

Her face grew dark as she stepped back from the console. "Why is
he still here? Why hasn't he gone home? Why is he helping us?"

"And where'd that cool flying carpet come from?"

"Nene!"

"Whaaaaat?"

* * *

Sunday, December 7, 2036. 12:04 AM

Well, it was official. I had been careless, sloppy and stupid.

No, not in combat. *There* I had been on the ball and didn't do
anything boneheaded. And it took less than 10 seconds to heal
myself of the bruise that superboomer gave me.

It was in my personal security procedures.

I still can't believe I never thought to take the helmet computer
out of "network link" mode. Two and a half years of careful
maintenance in a pre-industrial society, another six months of
care and use in a high-tech culture -- you'd think I'd've noticed
that it was still trying every few seconds to connect to the
Warriors' megaframe via UNNET.

Some fucking security chief *I* am. I let my own helmet computer
get *cracked*. Thank god the rest of the team hadn't been there.
If they had, I'd've never heard the end of it.

As to who had done it, well, the admittedly circumstantial
evidence pointed to the Knight Sabers. Rumor (in addition to my
own observations) held that Pink was the ECM and tech officer,
and probably a hacker extraordinaire. And given that there had
been no one else around other than the boomers -- and I didn't
believe *they* could do it, not at all -- it looked like Pink had
done what no one back home had yet managed -- she cracked
SQUID42, deciphered UNNET's protocols, *and* spoofed my helmet's
login pings, then got a full status dump. Apparently on the fly
and in real time.

I didn't know whether to congratulate her or strangle her.

I did know that I wasn't going to let it happen again.

First, I immediately turned off my helmet's network seek mode.
It wasn't like I was going to need it any time soon, anyway -- I
was *universes* away from home. I was tempted to dike out the
entire circuit, just for safety's sake, but I resisted the urge
and instead simply pulled the network I/O chip, coated the
relevant pins with an insulating spray, and re-installed it.
Voila, instant stand-alone system. So even if Pink *had*
installed a back door while she was in there (which as far as I
could tell she hadn't), there was no fucking way she was going to
be able to trigger it.

I still can't get over -- even at this late date -- the mere fact
that she did it. The computer tech in MegaTokyo was on a par
with homeline -- she couldn't have brute-forced a crack, not even
if she'd had signal samples since the day I arrived. Either she
was some kind of computer prodigy on the scale of, well, *me* and
some of the more versatile electropaths I've seen, or there was a
well-hidden vulnerability somewhere in SQUID42 that she found and
exploited. Or...

Thanks to Lady White's slip, I knew that the Knights had some
kind of inside connection at the AD Police. And to the best of
my knowledge the ADP was the only place in that universe --
outside of my helmet -- where you could find an algorithm from
the SQUID42 family. Their contact could have passed one of the
new radios to them; cracking the crypto would then have been
child's play for Pink, if her rep was on target. The only
question left would then be how and why she thought of applying
the ADP algorithm to my communications.

While I didn't develop SQUID42, I did put it through its most
rigorous testing; when it passed, I gave final approval for its
use within the Warriors and, by extension, throughout the UN. I
don't like to think that I missed something. And the alternative
meant that sooner or later -- probably sooner -- the Knights
would wonder why my helmet's telecomm and the ADP's new radios
both used essentially the same cryptosystem. Then it would be
only a matter of time before they decided to look closely at
Ganbare -- and its employees.

Just what I needed. More complications.

Anyway. While I had rendered my helmet computer proof against
future cracking efforts by Lady Pink and the High-Heel Gang
(barring any unexpected technologies or metatalents, of course),
I wasn't satisfied. It wasn't enough. I needed to show them
they couldn't mess with my computer and get away with it. I
would just have to return the favor and crack whatever encryption
protected *their* private communications. It was only fair,
after all.

Of course, I'd have to get a decent sample of the transmissions.
And that meant installing more static memory in the helmet to
hold those samples. There was room for more crystals in the
helmet; I just needed to get some. Or rather, make them -- from
the copy of the design and specs I kept in the helmet's permanent
storage. Thank god for the desktop nanofac at work -- within two
weeks I had filled all the unoccupied crystal ports and I was
ready to take some samples.

In the mean time, I still had gate songs to try, and I still had
to deal with Lisa's surreptitious revelation/ultimatum. And
while the former was turning into a regular habit, I had no idea
what to do about the latter.

* * *

Monday, December 8, 2036. 7:53 PM

In the shadowed booth, Sylia waited quietly. The only evidence
of impatience was the regular, rhythmic tap of the nail of her
right forefinger against the stem of the wine glass in front of
her. He wasn't late, not yet, and she was annoyed at herself for
her nervous eagerness. An ostensibly soothing melody drifted by,
and she forced herself to sip her wine and watch the graceful
bustle of the servers as they dashed from kitchen to table in
their mad dance.

At precisely eight, a shadow fell across her, and Sylia looked up
to see him, rumpled as always. She nodded to him. "Fargo."

"Sylia." He slipped into the seat opposite her and smiled
broadly before taking out a cigarette and lighting it. A curl of
smoke drifted upwards and its scent entered her nostrils
temptingly. She ignored it.

"A tasteful French restaurant," she said after a moment. "I'm
surprised. Isn't this a bit sophisticated for you?"

Fargo chuckled. "And how are you tonight, Sylia?"

"Fine, thank you," she sighed. "What have you found out?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. There is no company, corporation or non-profit
organization anywhere in the world called 'Warriors
International'. Nor any mercenary groups like yours. There are
no copyrights registered under that name, either." He shook his
head. "I'm sorry, Sylia, it was a complete dead end. I had the
trace run back over fifty years, per your request, but I found
absolutely nothing."

Sylia took another sip of her wine. "On the contrary, Fargo, you
have found exactly what I was looking for."

* * *

A street corner near Tokyo Tower. Saturday, December 13, 2036.
10:39 AM

Shinobu Nakamura leaned away from the grill of his yatai and
rested for a moment against the concrete wall behind him. It was
just far enough that the chill breeze was moderated slightly by
the grill's heat, allowing him to cool off without freezing in
the wind. The scanty weekend breakfast crowd had finally tapered
off to nothing, and he had a more than a moment to breathe and
think.

The winter zephyr carried the whine of a motorcycle's turbine to
his ear. Shinobu raised an eyebrow and waited.

Less than a minute later, a black motorcycle appeared, driven by
a man in jeans, a leather jacket and a black helmet. A second
helmet, this one oddly-shaped and grey, hung from back of the
cycle. Slowing down, the biker turned and drove into a narrow
alley across and slightly farther along the street.

It was not the first time Shinobu had seen the biker at this
corner. In his way, he was almost as much of a regular here as
any of Shinobu's customers, appearing more or less weekly for the
last couple months. As the motorcycle vanished into the shadows
of the alley, Shinobu nodded and began slowly counting.

He hadn't quite reached 200 before the motorcycle reappeared.
The driver seemed less confident or skilled than before -- the
front wheel quivered and the whole bike wobbled as he turned back
onto the street and, somewhat more slowly than he came, drove
away. Shinobu watched, unmoving, until the biker turned another
corner and vanished from sight.

He often wondered what it was the motorcyclist did in the alley
on such a regular basis. Was he a courier for some criminal
gang, picking up or dropping off ill-gotten profits or stolen
goods? Maybe he made drug deals there. His shaky driving when
he left was certainly suggestive of some kind of diminished
capacity; perhaps he sampled the wares?

*Perhaps it is nothing. But maybe,* Shinobu thought, *maybe I
should bring it to the attention of the police anyway. Just in
case.*

* * *

Wednesday, December 17, 2036. 9:24 AM

*Damn, but he photographs well.* Lisa mused, then recalled her
few nights out clubbing with Doug. *Almost as well as he
dances.* She shook herself and snorted. *Down, girl.* Repeated
presses of the PgDn key carried her through the images of Doug in
action, the window in which they appeared shrinking and growing
as needed to display each in their turn.

Around her, the city room of the "16 Times" hummed with its usual
bustle of activity, and no one spared any notice for her -- not
even the catatonic and the obsessive-compulsive who sat to either
side of her and had *still* to acknowledge her existence after
all these months.

Not that her disgrace had helped. Kiyoshi-san had had the
kindness not to reveal the details of her rapid status change,
but Lisa knew rumors had rippled back and forth across the city
room for almost a week afterwards. The aftermath had been...
difficult. Several formerly friendly co-workers now treated her
like burakumin, but others who had been distant and cool had
become sympathetic and encouraging. Including, to Lisa's
complete surprise, Toboki Chiasa. She shook her head, still
astonished how quickly Chiasa's fearsome demeanor disappeared
outside of the office.

*Stop woolgathering!* she admonished herself when she realized
how far afield her thoughts had drifted. What she needed to pay
attention to was selecting photos of Doug and the Sabers for a
"deep and incisive" article exploring the influence -- both
positive and negative -- of anti-boomer vigilantes on society at
large. She wasn't writing it -- Chiasa had that privilege. With
a pang Lisa quickly squelched the memory of how Kiyoshi had
flatly stated that it was too close to "hard news" for her to
work on yet. But since she had taken the majority of the Times'
recent photos of the Sabers and Doug, she had been allowed to
select the best candidates for inclusion with the article.

A printout of Chiasa's first draft lay on the desktop
immediately in front of the monitor, and Lisa paused to consult
it. A good fraction of the text dealt with the AD Police
viewpoint on the topic, the result of an interview with the ADP
chief. Nodding to herself, she retrieved several stock photos of
her Uncle Beauregard from the Times' archive and added them to
the directory where she was storing her selections. Looking over
one of the file photos, she paused a moment in thought once more.

According to Nene's investigations, the call her uncle had
received that afternoon almost six weeks ago had been deceptively
routed. Still, Nene was sure that it had originated somewhere in
GENOM tower. It hadn't been the first such call he'd received,
they'd found, nor had it been the last.

As Nene's logs and traces had built up over the last month, Lisa
had been forced to accept the possibility that her uncle was in
GENOM's pocket, to one degree or another. Lisa knew well enough
that it was almost impossible to advance in the political arena
of MegaTokyo without paying some kind of tribute to the
megacorporation, but she had never consciously associated that
with her uncle, the dedicated if short-tempered public servant.
*I don't want it to be true,* she thought, forgetting about the
photos. *I know I'd rather ignore the possibility, but I have to
face facts. The ADP is GENOM's plaything -- funded and equipped
at a bare subsistence level by the corporation's sufferance.
Whoever is in charge *has* to be a GENOM puppet.*

She shifted in her seat; the fidgety movement did not attract the
least attention from her co-workers on either side. *The real
question is... Is he theirs all the way, or has he been trying
to dance around whatever directives they force on him?*
Certainly the recent history of the ADP as related to her by both
Leon and Nene seemed to suggest her uncle had no great love for
GENOM. Leon in particular had taken great pride in describing
(confidentially, of course) the sometimes elaborate
circumlocutions Uncle Beauregard engaged in to allow his people
to work "off the books", as it were.

Even so, it hadn't been quite enough the first time. His
dismissal in late 2033 had certainly been politically motivated
and at GENOM's instigation, even if its hand had been well-
hidden. *He almost lost his pension,* she remembered, *and I
don't think it was a coincidence that almost all the city council
members who voted for letting him keep it weren't re-elected. Or
died in office...* It took public outcry after the whole Illegal
Army disaster -- and, Nene had claimed, some string-pulling by
Sylia -- to bring him back. Fortunately for him, GENOM and its
agents apparently did not hold a grudge against him, and it was
back to business as it had been two years earlier.

Which meant, Lisa realized, that they felt they had a far more
secure hold on him this time around. *So, Uncle is either on the
take or being blackmailed, or both,* she thought. *But he still
does what he can to subvert his "orders". How long can he get
away with it?*

She worried her lower lip with her teeth. *I wonder if Sylia
could do something to help him. After all, she did help get him
rehired, if Nene's right. While I'm at it, I wonder if there's
anything *Doug* could do to help...* In spite of her concerns,
she almost laughed out loud. *What am I thinking? He's going to
go and beat up GENOM until they let go of my uncle? Uh-huh,
sure.*

After briefly resting on an image of Doug peeking out from under
the other windows on the monitor, her eyes drifted away as her
thoughts turned away from the topic at hand. *It's been two
weeks since I more or less told him I knew his secret. What's
taking him so long?* She sighed. *Now, that's not fair, Lisa,*
she thought to herself, *You told him you'd respect his desire
for privacy, too, remember? But I *so* want to know if Nene's
right! I could always drop an anonymous hint to the Sabers to
try and force his hand...* She had to suppress the urge to shake
her head violently. *No! That would be betraying his trust! I
can't do that!*

She sighed again. *But it's so hard to do nothing but wait.*

* * *

Saturday, December 20, 2036. 2:41 AM

"It's so nice of you to have us over, Priss," Sylvie said. She
lifted the china cup to her lips and sipped her tea before
nibbling delicately on the biscotti that sat on the edge of her
saucer. The modest cotton dress she wore emphasized rather than
hid her slender beauty, and Priss approved of how the flowery
pattern matched the woman's lovely, hypnotic eyes.

Priss delicately adjusted her own yellow sun dress, then poured
herself more tea. "We *have* been somewhat... estranged... since
that unfortunate incident in the park. But I'm glad we're
friends again."

"Are we?" Anri asked. Where Sylvie was stunningly beautiful,
Anri was seductively cute in a youthful, innocent way. Like her
companion, she wore a flower print dress, and the growing
bloodstain on her side added an intriguing avant-garde
counterpoint to the traditional pattern. "Really, are we? We
were certainly good enough for you when you thought we were
human, but we're *not* human, Priss."

"And we know how you feel about boomers," Sylvie added, and Priss
noticed for the first time the lovely blossom of red on the
dress right over Sylvie's heart. *How sweet!* she thought
absently. *They have color-coordinated wounds!*

Then what they said registered. "But you're not boomers," she
laughed. "You're Sylvie and Anri!"

A look of consternation crossed Sylvie's lovely face. "We're
Sylvie and Anri the boomers, Priss. Sexaroids, remember? Vat-
grown to be eternal love slaves to executives and important
clients -- perverts and thrillseekers alike."

"Sadists and masochists and coprophiliacs and necrophiliacs and
transvestites and transsexuals and pedophiles," Anri said in a
flat, dead voice as blood continued to soak her side.

"Into golden showers and infantilism and domination and bondage
and leather and latex and needles and scarification," Sylvie
added somberly, the bloom of deep red on her chest spreading to
blot out the fabric's flower pattern.

"All forced on us without our consent," Anri said.

"Which is why we wanted to be free," Sylvie agreed.

"Don't be silly." Priss laughed nervously. "You're not like
boomers!"

"Why not, Priss?" Anri asked.

"You don't look like boomers!" Priss replied, a sudden
nervousness growing deep within herself.

"Most boomers aren't armor-plated killing machines, Priss."
Sylvie put her teacup down on the table and leaned forward to
stare at the other woman. "Most look pretty human, almost as
human as we do. Combat boomers are the exception, not the rule.
And even they can pass for humans if needed."

The blood from Sylvie's chest had begun to drip down off the
front of her dress, and Priss' heart had begun pounding. *This
isn't the way it's supposed to be,* she thought. *No,
something's terribly wrong here!*

"Our brains are no different, really, than any other boomers',
either." Anri, too, set down her cup and leaned forward, blood
pooling around her feet. "Fewer constraints and more freedom,
that's all."

"No!" Priss cried, overturning her chair as she leaped up.
"You're not real boomers! You're different, you're special!
Real boomers aren't anything like you!"

"What about me, Priss-san?" From behind her came what sounded
like the voice of a boy, but with a faint electronic quality to
it. Fear gripped her, and she spun around to see another face
lost to her over the years -- a familiar, motionless, mechanical
face.

"Adama," she whispered. "Oh, gods." She shook her head.
"You... you're different, too," she whispered as panic took
control of her and sent her limbs trembling. She suddenly
noticed that his body and face were riddled with bloodless bullet-
holes.

"I am *not* a boomer, then, Priss-san?" Adama asked. "But I'm
not a human, either. If I'm not a boomer *or* human, what am I?
Please tell me, Priss-san. What makes us not boomers? And how
then are we not human?"

"Man is poised midway between ape and angel," Anri said.

"Must boomers always be poised midway between can openers and
Man?" Sylvie asked.

Priss spun in place, unable to stop without seeing one of them --
Sylvie or Anri, soaked in blood and reaching out for her, or
Adama, sparks beginning to spit out through his own dry, sterile
wounds. She spun and spun, and the panic spun and spun with her,
carrying her and lifting her. How could they ask, can't they see
she didn't have the answers, she couldn't answer without
betraying her own reasons for still living, boomers were evil it
was obvious so the ones that weren't evil couldn't be boomers but
they weren't human but they were friends but she couldn't be
friends with a boomer but she was and she killed them and they
died in her arms and she cried for them but she couldn't cry for
boomers boomers were evil and

Priss screamed.

* * *

Her eyes flashed open, and she sat up, flailing the covers to one
side. A cold winter draft wafted around her as she sat in the
semi-darkness grey-lit by the eternal city nightlights that
filtered through the curtains and blinds of her trailer. "Fuck,"
she spat as she swung her feet off the bed and stumbled to the
fridge for a beer. She popped the top and began to drink.
"That's the worst one in a long time," she mumbled between swigs.

When she finished, she fumbled her way back to her bed and
burrowed back under the covers. "Yellow sun dress, gah," she
murmured before slipping once again into sleep.

Had someone been there to sit upon the edge of her bed, they
would have heard her mournfully breathe three names as she once
again dreamed.

* * *

Wednesday, December 24, 2036. 11:55 PM

One of the things I miss most from growing up is Christmas
songs. (Sure, I can listen to instrumentals, but how many times
can you do "Carol of the Bells" before you go nuts?)

I really loved Christmas songs. But I don't dare play them any
more.

There are Powers out there, you see. And they can be called.
Sometimes they listen. And, very rarely, they answer.

And, most of the time, no sane person should want that to happen.

Let me make something very, very clear. I don't like gods.
Imagine the worst-behaved two-year-old you've ever encountered.
Make him immortal and invulnerable. Then give him an endless
supply of hydrogen bombs. That's your typical god.

I've met more than my share of typical gods. I owe a couple for
favors they've done for me.

I also had to kill one once.

Well, not by myself. But I struck the killing blow.

Yeah, Hexe's a goddess. But she's an *avatar*, and that's
different. An avatar filters the god through a human mind and
human thoughts, and as a result, they tend to have more human
sensibilities. They still have the temperament and the
priorities and the damned snootiness of a god, though. (On Hexe,
the snootiness can be cute sometimes. Sometimes. Don't tell her
I said that, she'll kill me.)

Anyway, I really, really dislike gods. I try to have as little
to do with them as possible.

Which is why I don't -- won't -- do religious songs, least of all
Christmas music. It's all "thank you for coming to visit us" and
"welcome" and "we rejoice in your arrival", and it's practically
guaranteed to get Someone's attention -- attention that I most
emphatically *do not want*.

So what was I doing on top of the Glory Bank building in downtown
MegaTokyo at five minutes to midnight on Christmas Eve?

Being stupid *and* sentimental, what else?

I'd been living in MegaTokyo almost exactly six months at that
point, and based on my experiences, I'd decided if that city
needed anything, it needed cheering up. It needed encouragement.
It needed hope.

No matter how many bots I fought, no matter how much I stretched
my metatalent, I couldn't do that by myself. Hell, I had just
barely gotten out of the "urban legend" category at that point --
I was far too novel to be universally inspiring.

(I can just hear Hexe in the back of my mind: "Looney?
Inspiring? Ha!")

I have to admit, *I* also needed hope and encouragement. It was
almost -- not quite, but close enough -- the third anniversary of
the day I ran into battle and right into that metavillain's
damned portal. Three years since I had seen Maggie, since I had
held her (instead of a simulacrum) in my arms, since I had heard
her voice, since I had kissed her. It was the six-month
anniversary of my great failure -- the gate that was supposed to
take me home but which brought me here instead. And it marked
six months of failures to open another gate home. Despite having
the on-and-off company of Lisa Vanette -- Miss Hyperactive
MegaTokyo 2036 -- these past six months, I desperately needed
cheering up of my own.

So there I was, standing on top of one of the larger buildings in
Tinsel City, which seemed deliciously appropriate given the
holiday season. And there I was with a set of lyrics thrown up
on my helmet's HUD. And there I was actually debating whether or
not I really wanted to attract the attention of a divine being
simply to cheer up both myself and a major Asian city.

"<Oh, what the hell>," I muttered. "<A man's gotta live
dangerously once in a while. System, 'Joyful Joyful,' play.>"

It was the choral part of the final movement from Beethoven's
Ninth, the "Ode to Joy", in English and funked up with a pop/rock
beat. I'd lifted it from the soundtrack of a movie some years
ago, just in case.

"<Joyful, joyful, Lord, we adore thee,
God of glory, Lord of love...>"

As the solo a capella vocalist started it off, I reached for that
damned node and grabbed hold of it firmly. The hell with my
worries -- I was going to need a lot of power for this if I
wanted it to work.

The band kicked in, and I opened myself up to the magic.

* * *

"He calls to us. Now?"

"No. It is not yet time."

"But he makes a request. Do we grant it?"

"I say yes. He asks for nothing we would not have given one by
one to all those who would have asked individually. What say
you, my sister-selves?"

"Mmmmmm. Yes, let's. It will be different and fun."

"He asks not just for himself, but for multitudes whom he has
never met. Yes, let us do it. But let us not let him know, for
no mortal should think they can command Us to perform at their
whim."

"Then it is decided."

"It is decided."

"It is decided."

"So mote it be."

* * *

To those who are properly sensitive, divine power is a very
visible thing.

Douglas Sangnoir, known as "Loon" and "Looney Toons", was not
properly sensitive. At least, not at that moment.

He did not see the pillar of mystic fire that he sent hurtling
upwards into the night sky, for it had ceased to be the
"ordinary" magic visible to his Sight. And he did not sense its
return as a great wave that spread forth from where he stood to
wash over the city.

* * *

At the precinct houses and in the patrol cars of the Normal
Police all over MegaTokyo, officers of the law watched in growing
surprise and concern as the city's usual crime tapered off and
almost vanished. In their holding cells, many of the prisoners
from arrests earlier in the evening grew quiet and thoughtful,
smiling or bowing respectfully to the officers who processed them
through the legal system.

In a laboratory deep within GENOM Tower, Dr. Daniel Ohara woke
from where he had briefly fallen asleep over the records of the
Loon's last two appearances. He felt... refreshed. As he
glanced again at the papers and the monitor on his desk, he felt
the despair that had grown in him over the past months shrink
away.

In the maternity and pediatric wards of the city's hospitals, all
crying stopped. The consumption of pain-killers and sedatives in
their other wards dropped to a fraction of its usual rate.

At AD Police headquarters, an officer on night duty named
Bochinski felt a peace fill him unlike anything he'd ever
experienced before, and he swore he'd find a way to hold on to
it.

The MegaTokyo Suicide Prevention Hotline, bolstered with extra
volunteers against the usual barrage brought on by holiday
depression, had exactly 7 callers between midnight and dawn.
One of these simply wanted to wish the volunteers a happy holiday
and thank them for their good work.

Atop Ladys633, Sylia Stingray slept and dreamt of her father, of
the fulfillment of his posthumous charge to her, and of a chance
to live for herself and herself alone.

As midnight mass was performed at MegaTokyo's Cathedral of Saint
Jude, passers-by began to wander in. By the time the service had
finished, the cathedral was filled to capacity -- for the first
time in its ten-year history.

In her small apartment, Lisa Vanette shifted in her sleep and
knew in her dreams that everything -- her job, her mother, her
relationship with Doug -- would work out.

And a million minds wrapped in chains felt a glimmer of
unexplained, alien hope.

* * *

I let the song run its full length, but I already knew it was
useless. I'd felt the magic pour through me and out to who knows
where or what, but no Power had answered. It figured. The one
time I *wanted* a god involved, and they gave me the finger. But
I couldn't find it in myself to be upset. Humanity shouldn't
have the gods hand them happiness on a platter, anyway. We'll
find our own way, eventually, and it'll be better for the
striving and the obstacles we overcome in the process.

*Gods. Huh. Who needs'em?* I thought to myself as I looked out
over downtown. *It still is a gorgeous night.* Light pollution
hid most of the stars, but the moon was a bit shy of half-full
and bathed the streets in a faint silver light. It looked
deceptively peaceful down there; it reminded me in an odd way of
a traditional Christmas back in the States and I felt strangely
at ease. Now all I needed to do was figure out what to do about
Lisa and her little hints and intimations.

I stood and watched over the city for another hour before I went
back home and to bed.

* * *

Friday, January 2, 2037. 8:12 PM

It had been almost a month and a half, and *nothing*.

Lisa sat on her futon, fuming and ignoring her TV.

On Christmas morning, they had exchanged gifts -- he had given
her a gift certificate from her favorite camera shop, and she had
given him a collection of Warner Brothers cartoons. She'd
expected him to come clean with her then and there as an extra
"gift", but no such luck.

There had been times when it had looked like he was about to open
up to her, but then he would just turn around and change the
subject. It was absolutely infuriating.

"Enough is enough," she said out loud, surprising herself at
first. "He's had six weeks. He should know enough to know he
can trust me!" A determined look on her face, she hopped up and
off the futon, slid on her slippers, and stormed out the door.

She flung open the door to Doug's apartment and stepped in,
boldly announcing, "Doug, we have to talk! Now!"

There was a pregnant silence, and Lisa suddenly realized that
Doug was not alone. He and another person sat at the tiny
dinette, Doug's helmet between them, playing a song. She gaped
as she took in Doug's guest: A gaijin woman with waist-length
blonde hair, her lush curves not at all hidden by the tight black
Spandex bodysuit she wore. She also wore high boots and
fingerless gloves, both apparently of soft black leather. But
her most bizarre feature was the makeup that covered her face and
made her look like some kind of humanoid cat.

A brief spark of irrational jealousy flickered through Lisa. For
a long moment she stared at them, and they stared at her. Then
the gaijin woman turned to Doug and said in a mild, melodious
voice, "<Then again, she may force the issue after all...>"

END OF CHAPTER SIX

------------------------------------
(Version 1.1, 25 September 2001)
(Version 1.2, 22 October 2003)
(Version 1.1, 22 October, 2003)

This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2000, Robert M. Schroeck.

Bubblegum Crisis, and the settings and the characters thereof are
copyright by and trademarks of Artmic Inc. and Youmex Inc., and
are used without permission.

"Douglas Q. Sangnoir," "Looney Toons", "The Loon" and any
representations thereof are copyright by and trademarks of Robert
M. Schroeck.

"The Warriors", "Warriors' World", "Warriors International" and
"Warriors Alpha" are all jointly-held trademarks of The Warriors
Group.

Wetter Hexe and any representations thereof are copyright by and
a trademark of Helen Imre.

Arcanum and any representations thereof are copyright by and a
trademark of Helen Imre and John L. Freiler.

Shockwave and any representations thereof are copyright by and a
trademark of Jeffrey Ventemilia.

Kat and any representations thereof are copyright by and a
trademark of Kathleen Avins.

Original Japanese lyrics from "Boku Wa Motto Pioneer", recorded
by Chisa Yokoyama, written by Natsuko Karedo, copyright (C) by
AIC-Pioneer LDC Inc. English lyrics from "I'm A Pioneer",
recorded by Sharyn Scott, written by Lorraine Feather and
copyright (C) by AIC-Pioneer LDC Inc.

Lyrics from "Sympathy for the Devil", recorded by the Rolling
Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, copyright (C)
1968, but the holder of the copyright is unknown to me.

These and all other quotes are included in this fiction without
permission under the "fair use" provisions of international
copyright law.

For a full explanation of the references and hidden tidbits in
this story, see the Drunkard's Walk II Concordance at:

http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/dw2conc.html

Other chapters of this story can be found at:

http://www.eclipse.net/~rms/dwmain.html

The Drunkard's Walk discussion forums are open for those who wish
to trade thoughts and comments with other readers, as well as
with the author:

http://pub21.ezboard.com/bdrunkardswalkforums

Many thanks to my prereaders on this chapter: Joseph Avins,
Kathleen Avins, Nathan Baxter, Ed Becerra, Barry Cadwgan, Andrew
Carr, Kevin Cody, Chris Davies, and Helen Imre. Additional
prereaders for future chapters welcome.

C&C gratefully accepted.