As I've noted elsewhere, Drunkard's Walk II began its life as a continuation of the BGC world developed in Twister's Twisted Path and Ed Becerra's Legion's Quest series. Between 1996 and 1998, before I abandoned the hope of working in that shared universe, I actually wrote a considerable amount of text featuring their characters. Fortunately, I've been able to recycle a lot of that material with a minimal amount of work.

The scene where Nene displays the results of her intrusion into Doug's helmet, and where the Sabers form their first theories about his origin, is one such scene. By a happy circumstance, I still have a copy of the earliest version of this scene, in which Lisa Vanette's role in the later version is spread between the Sabers themselves and Twister's Darlene Stefansen. The most signficantly different section -- one which addresses a point brought up in the concordance -- follows. Enjoy!

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.  The Beatles broke up in 1971, right after the Revolver Tour.
They didn't get back together again until just before Paul
McCartney's death in 1983."  She 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 three 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?"

"You practice a lot?" Nene ventured.

"You study, too."  As she spoke, Linna straightened up and
favored 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.

"Look, Nene, 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 straightened up.  "Didn't you ever wonder how I
was able to teach Twister how to sing?"  A light of comprehension
began to dawn in Nene's eyes, as Linna grinned and nodded.  "I
studied and trained, just like Linna did to be a dancer.  Not as
formally as her, more like the way you learned to be a hacker,
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 in the long evolution of rock'n'roll music, Nene, and I
took in all of it.  The only way to know how to take music where
I want it to go is to know where it's been."

There was an unexpected burst of applause, and when the three
looked up, they saw Darlene leaning on the doorframe, clapping.
"Very nice speech, Priss.  I think that's the most I've ever
heard you say at once -- in public, at least."  Priss growled
half-heartedly and Darlene giggled.  Then she stepped into the
room and took a seat.  "So, what was all that about?  It didn't
sound like it had anything to do with the usual after-mission
debriefing."

"Actually, it was, in a way," Linna replied.  "Priss was just
explaining how she was so certain that the Beatles broke up in
1971."

Darlene squirmed her way into a more comfortable position in her
chair.  "So how's that related to a mission?"  She suddenly
frowned.  "Wait, don't you mean 1972?"

"No," Priss said wearily, "1971.  Don't tell me you doubt me,
too."

"No, no, not at all," Darlene backpedaled hastily.  "I just had
to shift gears for a moment.  In the universe where I was born,
the Beatles broke up in 1972."

"'In the universe where you...'" Nene repeated, her eyes
widening.  She spun around in her chair, back to the computer
console.  Her hands flew over the keyboard in a ratatattat of
furious typing.

Darlene blinked several times, then looked over at Sylia.
"Ooookay.  What am I missing?"

"During today's mission, Nene extracted a technical readout from
a computer we think belongs to the new vigilante."  Sylia's calm
tone was a stark contrast to Nene's sudden burst of energy.  "Its
storage holds a large number of songs and related information,
for some reason.  One of them apparently is a Beatles song
recorded in 1974."

"A what?"  Darlene sat straight up in her chair.

Sylia nodded.

"That's impossible."

"No!" shouted Nene.  "The vigilante is an extradimensional
visitor, just like you.  Look!"  She waved at the monitor in
front of her.  "I just did a comp/diff redline between the list
of songs in the vigilante's computer and the Net Music Project's
database.  After I dumped anything that was in the Project's db
but not in the list, this is what's left.  Check this out!"

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.  Yeah, I'm sure."

The room was filled with a cacophony of voices as the five women
crowded around the console..

"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'?"

"Interesting."

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

"What's T. Rex, Darlene?"

"Weird, it looks like he's got 'Hotel California' by the Eagles,
but he doesn't have 'Under An Alhambra Moon'."

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

For fifteen minutes, they poured over the list of anomalies.
Darlene tried to identify the songs familiar to her, but in the
end there were still unknowns left on the display.  However,
there were a number of surprises among the remainder.

"Damn that little bastard!" Priss swore.  "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 had not yet made it into the
international database.  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 few months.

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

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

Finally, they exhausted the list.  Sighing as she stood up
straight, Sylia nodded at the hacker.  "Nene, you've made your
case.  It seems very likely that the vigilante's a visitor like
Darlene and Edward."  She paused for a moment.  "*If* the
computer is his.  We still don't know that for sure."

Darlene's face grew dark as she stepped back from the console.
"Now the question is, why is he here?  And what does he want?"

"And where did he get that cool flying carpet?"

"Nene!"

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