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



14:  What For You Bury Me In The Cold, Cold Ground?


Not a silent one
But a defiant one
Never a normal one
'Cause I'm the bastard son
With the visions of the move
Vocals not to soothe
But to ignite and put in flight
My sense of militance
-- Rage Against the Machine, "Fistful of Steel"

Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything
will be done?  -- John Steinbeck

But February made me shiver,
With every paper I'd deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep,
I couldn't take one more step.
I can't remember if I cried
When I heard about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
-- Don McLean, "American Pie"


Saturday, February 14, 2037, 11:17 AM

Lisa found the box outside her door as she left for her lunch
with Daley:  small, red, and shaped like a heart.  It rested on
top of an envelope, also a deep crimson in shade.  She stared at
them for a moment before she realized the date.  *Valentine's
Day.  I'd completely forgotten!  But who...?*

*Doug.  It has to be Doug.*  The thought sent a warm glow through
her.  *He's *so* American.  He probably doesn't have a clue about
White Day or anything.  But I don't care.*  She picked up the
gift and opened the envelope to find a simple, hand-made card.
"For my best friend in this whole, wide world.  Happy Valentine's
Day."  *Sweet.*  She smiled to herself, realizing the blunt
honesty hidden in the unusual phrasing, but finding nothing
offensive in it.  *Not exactly what I would have wanted, but good
enough.  Good enough.*

As she stepped back into her apartment, she opened the box to 
find it full of chocolate-covered cherries.  With a moan of 
delight she treated herself to a single one -- better not spoil 
her appetite for lunch, after all.  The chocolate coating 
resisted her teeth for a bare moment, then collapsed, shattering 
into delicious shards as the thick, sweet juice surrounding the 
cherry within flooded her mouth.  She closed her eyes and savored 
the blend of flavors as she slowly chewed the fruit and candy, 
then reluctantly swallowed.  "Oh, Doug, if only you weren't 
already married..." she whispered, half-seriously.  With great 
care, she placed the box and its remaining treats in her 
refrigerator.

*I'm going to have to give him something, of course,* she mused
as she left her apartment a few moments later.  *I don't dare
give him honmei-choco, I can't express that kind of feeling for a
married man.  But I want to do more than just giri-choco...  Mou!
And how do I get it to him?  I have no idea where he's staying.*

As she stepped into the elevator, the answer made itself known.
*I can go to IDEC on Monday.  And it's not really honmei-choco if
I don't give it on the 14th, right?  Hm.  I'm going to need a few
ingredients if I'm going to do this right...*  Delighted with her
logic, and planning a shopping list, she nodded happily to
herself as she pressed the button for the ground floor.

Not quite an hour later, Lisa was seated in a kissaten not far
from AD Police headquarters, waiting for her lunch partner.  As
she absently stirred her coffee, she thought about chocolates for
Doug, weighing alternatives and thinking about the recipes her
college friends had used from time to time.

She had gotten so engrossed in the matter that she failed to
notice Daley Wong walk up to the table, until he waved a hand in
her face.  "Oi, Lisa-chan!" he called, and she started.

"Oh, Daley-san!" she blurted, flustered, as she stood and bowed.
Daley smile privately at her overly-formal manner.  "Please
forgive me.  I hope I didn't keep you standing there long."

"Only a moment, Lisa-chan," Daley replied as he slid into the 
other chair at the table.  "Please, sit down, and *relax*.  And 
what have I told you about calling me 'Daley-san'?  You've been 
able to be informal with me before, you know.  Or don't you 
remember jumping into a patrol car with me once and yelling at
me to 'step on it'?"

She giggled nervously and did as he suggested.  "Sorry," she
apologized again, and cringed sheepishly as she realized what
she was doing.  "Old habits, you know.  They creep out if I
don't keep a lid on them."

The ADP inspector nodded, his smile only growing wider.  "Yes,
I know, unfortunately."  Lisa giggled again.

They exchanged small talk for a quarter of an hour as they
considered their choices, made their orders, and waited for their
food to be served.  Once the proprietor of the small cafe had
placed their meals before them and left them to eat, Lisa finally
broached the subject that she really wanted to discuss.

"Daley," she said after several bites, "You know I asked you to
lunch for a reason, right?"

He smiled.  "This is where I'd usually make some joke about 
saving myself for Leon-chan, but I think I can pass on that 
today.  You want some inside information, ne?"

Lisa laughed nervously and toyed with her chopsticks.  "You got
me.  Yeah, there was something I wanted to find out.  Off the
record, of course."

"Something Nene-chan couldn't get for you?" Daley asked, one
eyebrow creeping up into his hairline.

"Well," she extemporized, "I don't think she'd have access to
this information."  *Not to mention that this'd be a bad time to
ask Nene for *anything* she might think was related to Doug,
judging from how she was acting Thursday night,* she silently
appended.

The eyebrow rose higher, and was joined by its partner.  "We
*are* talking about the same Nene-chan, right?"

For the first time Lisa wondered just how much Daley knew or
suspected about the Knight Sabers' membership.  "Well..." she
stalled while trying to think up something plausible.

Daley studied her for a moment.  Then he shrugged.  "All right.
As long as it isn't *too* sensitive, and it *stays* off the
record."

"On my honor," Lisa quickly swore.  "This is simply background
for an investigative piece I'm researching.  Unless I get the
same info from an unrelated source, I won't even refer to it in
my article."

He nodded.  "Good enough.  Fire away."

Lisa placed her chopsticks on their ceramic rest and leaned
forward.  "The boomers from Thursday night.  Have your people
interrogated them, gone over their internal logs or whatever, to
see who sent them out?"

"Yes," Daley said after a moment.  Even though his posture didn't
actually change, he seemed to slump in his chair.

"And?  Who did it?"

Daley frowned.  After a long silence he said, "We don't know.
*They* don't know.  They just remember activating in Geo City
Plaza.  Their mission recorders were zeroed out just before they
woke up, too."

"Wait, wait."  Lisa waved her hands in a "hold on" motion.
"Isn't that supposed to be impossible?"

"Well, yeah.  'Supposed to be' is the operative phrase there."
Daley took a sip of his tea.  "Of course, GENOM swears up and
down that there's no way to do it.  The only boomers who should
have zeroed recorders would be brand-new ones that have never
been activated."

"Uh-huh."  Lisa scrunched her nose up.  "And I'll just bet that
they weren't brand-new boomers."

Daley nodded.  "You'd win.  We traced their serial numbers and
some of them were actually used in the Polar War over six years
ago."

"Well, if you traced the serial numbers, then who are their
owners?" Lisa asked.

"Nobody," he said with a laugh.  "They were listed as either
stolen or destroyed anywhere between two and four years back."

She nodded sagely.  "Of course they were."  She gave him a
serious look.  "You know that has to add up to GENOM.  Who else
would be able to do something as 'impossible' as zeroing a
boomer's recorders?"

"Believe me, we're quite aware of that," Daley said softly.  "But
it's all cobwebs.  There's not even enough there to be called
circumstantial evidence."

"But if it's GENOM," Lisa mused, "then who in GENOM is it?  From
what I heard, IDEC's no longer chasing the Loon, so it can't be
them."

Daley shrugged.  "Your guess is as good as mine."

                              * * *

IDEC.  Saturday, February 14, 2037, 4:11 PM

After (carefully) dropping off my little Valentine's Day present
on Lisa's doorstep, I took a bus to the Tower.  I waved my badge
at the security folks (I was even more certain by then that they
were all boomers) and hopped an elevator to the 17th floor to get
in some more R&D time.

Well, it's not like I actually had a life or hobbies or anything
else to do on a grey, slushy winter Saturday, even if it *was*
Valentine's Day.

It was the second morning since the debacle, and I still had the
faint ache behind my eyes.  One and a half full nights' sleep
hadn't fully dispelled that yet, and I was doing my best to
ignore it as I carded myself through various doors.  I stopped at
the employee lounge for another megadose of aspirin just as a
precaution, then locked myself in my workshop for what I expected
would be yet another day's worth of "frustrate the researcher".

As it turned out, I would be pleasantly surprised.

First things first, I gave my notes on the grav gun conversion a 
final once-over, to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.  I'd 
done my final bench tests on the actual unit the night before and 
was well pleased -- I hadn't lost my touch when it came to 
hacking gravtech.  All that remained there was to dump the 
control circuitry to the nanofac, and add the necessary code to 
the bike's autopilot.  Then I could actually install the unit on 
the cycle and I would no longer be groundbound.

I was really looking forward to that.

Anyway, my conversion guidelines looked solid, so I packaged them
into a compressed archive.  Then I set up a couple of levels of
redirect through the GENOM dataweave and threw some distractions
at the corporate watchdog software that was intended to prevent
people from doing what I was doing.  Never mind how or what --
that's my trade secret.  I will tell you this, though:  I didn't
use my metagift, and root access is a terrible thing to waste.

So while the security programs were off chasing their own tails, 
I shot the archive off to several anonymous delayed-mail servers 
that I'd scouted out over the previous couple of days.  I set the 
delay on each server to deadman-7/12 -- meaning release the file 
a week after I stopped sending daily "hold" messages or after 
twelve months, whichever came first.  At that time, I instructed 
the servers, they were to mail the archive to half a dozen or so 
high-technology companies in the US and Japan that I had 
carefully selected.  They would also post it to every newsgroup 
in USENET's "tech" hierarchy that had ".grav" in its name, as 
well as tech.talk, alt.aviation.new and -- just to be safe -- ten 
more newsgroups to be picked at random from the whole of USENET 
by each server at delivery time.

(Gods, I love libertarian/anarchist programmers.  I snagged a 
copy of the source for the server program and burned it to ROM 
for use when I got back home.)

The resulting swarm of archive copies would hopefully get through 
any countermeasure GENOM could come up with, short of bringing 
down the entire Net.  I didn't put it past them to try that, but 
even in that worst case, copies would still be residing on a 
hundred thousand independent systems by the time GENOM got its 
act together.  Non-weapon gravtech would be free, no matter what 
GENOM wanted.

I completed the job by starting the nanofac up and dumping the
control circuitry file to it.  The fac would spit out the
completed circuit block sometime on Sunday; I'd pick it up and
bring it home on Monday.  Then I carefully packed the kitbashed
grav drive in the gym bag in which I had originally carried it to
IDEC; if time allowed, I'd spend Sunday afternoon coding the
support for the new circuitry and installing the grav unit on my
cycle.

That done, I decided to indulge my curiosity about the initials 
that I'd found in the boomer brain design some days before.  I 
ordered up a lunch from the burger place in the Tower food court 
and set to work trying to find all possible combinations of 
"boomer", "buma", "brain" and "KS" both in GENOM's internal 
databases and out on the Net.  I did a little fancy footwork in a 
few non-tech systems and used several GENOM subsidiaries' 
subscriptions to various private databases to spread my search a 
little wider.

Despite my best efforts I still had to filter through a lot of
Knight Sabers drek, but eventually I found him, practically a
footnote in the history of boomer development as presented by
GENOM:  Katsuhito Stingray.  (Talk about your goofy names...  Or
maybe not, considering pots, kettles and apparent reflectivity
indices...)

Something of a latter-day Renaissance man, he worked for an
outfit called Wiz Laboratories (which GENOM later took over,
natch) until he died in what the official biographical paragraph
described as "an accidental explosion".  Parsing *that* through
the GENOM-to-Truth converter gets us "assassinated after his
critical breakthrough so we could nick all the rights when we
bought the company."

Except that GENOM *didn't* get *all* the rights to boomertech --
according to certain other databases I consulted, Stingray had
filed for and received a few key patents before his death, and
they were still in the hands of his two children, Sylia and
Mackinnison.  (*Who* in their right mind names their kid
"Mackinnison"?  God only knows what damage that did to the poor
boy's psyche growing up, especially combined with having his dad
murdered...)

Anyway, out of a kind of paternal interest in these two probable 
victims of GENOM's greed, I looked into their lives.  It turned 
out to be a more challenging task than I had expected -- both 
kept a very low profile.  However, I found enough.  They were 
doing well for themselves -- for some reason GENOM hadn't tried 
to cheat or lawyer them out of the remaining patents (probably 
because it would have been a PR nightmare even GENOM's 
spinmeisters couldn't have fixed), and those patents had been 
worth a *lot*.  The girl -- well, woman, actually, since she was 
now in her middle-late 20s -- was a multimillionaire who 
apparently split her time between running a lingerie shop and 
dabbling (rather successfully) in real estate.  The boy was an 
engineering prodigy who was attending college in Germany, but had 
previously lived with his sister in their penthouse home right 
here in beautiful downtown MegaTokyo. They certainly weren't 
suffering, despite their father's probable murder at GENOM's 
hands.

(*"They killed your parents, didn't they?"*)

The memory of my own voice whispered to me from the back of my
mind, and I stopped for a moment to consider what it had to say.
Then I pulled up what precious little there was on Sylia Stingray
in the public databases -- suspiciously little, come to think of
it.  I supplemented it with material I had eased out of some
GENOM files I really wasn't supposed to know about.  I added in
various news shots of both the White Knight and Stingray.  I
studied the combined results and thought.

Allowing for those stupid heels and the general increase in 
dimensions imposed by the armor, she'd be about the right height 
and build.  Her brother had clearly inherited their father's 
genius, so why not her?  But either one could be the Knights' 
technologist.  She had more than enough money to start (if not 
continuously fund) a private mercenary force.  She clearly had 
sufficient pull to ensure her online profile was small enough to 
overlook easily.  She had the free time.  And she had a motive 
that tallied up nicely with Lady White's obsession with boomers.

Add to that the fact that the name I'd overheard in their radio
chatter as "Celia" could easily have been "Sylia" instead, and I
was pretty sure that I had found the leader of the Knight Sabers.

I sat back from the monitor on which I had laid out Stingray and
Knight images side-by-side.  What was I going to do with this
information?

I thought about it for a while, and the answer was clear.

Nothing.

It made no difference to me, in the long run, who Lady White and 
the High-Heel Gang really were in their civilian identities.  I 
did reserve the information for future blackmail, though.  A 
threat that I'd dispatched a tell-all message into the delayed-
mail systems could be useful if the Knights were to change their 
minds and come after me; just a hint that such a revelation was 
on a deadman switch like the grav drive plans, and I could 
probably force the Knights to leave me alone forever.

I wouldn't actually do that -- I didn't want to entrust Lady
White's security to a set of hacker-built relay systems.  GENOM
might not get its grubby little hands on the secret (not right
away, at least), but god knows who else might -- and from thence
to GENOM anyway.  But like I said, the *claim* that I had would
make a good threat.  I'd only use it, though, if I had no choice
but to antagonize them further.

As a private, personal show of good faith -- Sylia Stingray would 
certainly never know about it -- I erased the "KS" from the 
boomer brain CAD files.  It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, 
I'll admit it, and in retrospect it was a mistake.  Had I 
bothered to think about it at all, I wouldn't have done it; it 
was, I later realized with disgust at myself, the equivalent of 
wiping a painter's signature from his masterpiece -- an act of 
vandalism.  Those initials only led me to the identity of the 
White Knight because of information that, outside of the Knights' 
organization, I alone possessed.  Someone else might have made 
the connection to Katsuhito Stingray, but not the leap to his 
daughter.

But I didn't think of any of that.  I just saw a step in the
chain or reasoning connecting the creation of boomers to the
Knight Sabers and removed it.  I blanked out the relevant parts
of the files' internal change histories and reset their dates so
that there was no evidence of tampering, then copied the altered
files back to the server where I'd originally found them.  I ran
into a little trouble with a security daemon that objected to the
changes in their checksums, but it was nothing I couldn't handle.

That brought me up to late afternoon, and left me nothing to do 
but what I had actually come there to do.  What I had been 
dreading having to do all day:  following up on Lisa's lead.

Yeah, I had been procrastinating by taking care of everything 
else first.  This was basically because I wasn't looking forward 
to another big zero to round out my week.

Stupid me.

It took me all of 45 minutes to find.

They'd stashed it in the financials subweave, whose gateway I'd 
never bothered to crack, and which I'd excluded from my earlier 
internal searches on the grounds that I wouldn't find tech info 
there and it would be a waste of time to look.  Well, you know 
what they say happens when you assume...

Yeah, I hate that stupid saying, too.  Makes me want to reach out
and throttle the smug asshole who's saying it.  Only this time
*I* was the smug asshole.

Then again, I usually am.  Heh.

Anyway.

This time, I'd included the financials subweave in my in-house
search because of Lisa's suspicion that GENOM had crushed the
offending corporation.  While that would likely include direct
paramilitary action using boomers -- it wouldn't be a GENOM op
without'em -- there was no way such an attack would go down
without a financial component.  Thus there ought to be some kind
of record of the corresponding economic campaign in the
appropriate systems.

And so there was.

The company had been called Mirmecoleon Labs.  They had been 
primarily a chemical weapons outfit, and in early 2026 they were 
poised to launch a mysterious new product, one that would 
establish their place in a market increasingly dominated by 
mechanized means of war.

Six months later, they were toast.  GENOM had found out about
their new product, and had attacked them on all fronts, both
public and covert.  I found a neatly organized report on the
entire campaign.  GENOM hadn't just destroyed the company, it
had assassinated its officers, killed its researchers, bankrupted
it, and ground it under foot.  Then, after no one was left who
knew or understood what the company had in the way of
intellectual property, GENOM bought its assets at auction through
a front company for pennies on the dollar.

And the only access to those assets was a now single link from
the financial systems to a datastore flagged almost ten years
earlier as "pending final disposition" and apparently forgotten.
Like I said once before, GENOM was schizophrenically diversified.
Entire divisions could and did go rogue for months before anyone
in upper management noticed.  Here was another case in point.
Mirmecoleon had come up with something which GENOM's upper
management had seen as a threat.  Orders had been dispatched, and
a different branch of the corp handled the problem, while the
original order-givers forgot entirely about it.  Not being the
ones who had seen the threat, and not being techs, the financial
division had no idea what they had on their hands.  So they put
it all on ice, pending further instructions which never came.

Where I had found it.

The source of Lisa's rumor.

Mirmecoleon Labs, it seems, saw its corporate doom in the
prospect of the all-boomer war.  Boomers weren't bothered by
"conventional" chemical agents short of submerging them in
something like nitric acid for a weekend.  The kind of weapons
that were Mirmecoleon's bread and butter were going to go the way
of the buggy whip with that kind of combatant dominating the
battlefield.

So they put their heads together and came up with a weapon 
tailored to kill boomers.

They called it Leontophonus -- "Lion's bane".  Don't ask me why.

Just looking at the plain-Japanese specs, I knew it was going to 
be a bitch to work with.  Half bacterium, half nanobot, it was an 
airborne agent that acted like a mold on methamphetamines. 
Designed to eat anything carbon-based when it found itself inside 
a cyberdroid, it rampaged through boomer immune systems like 
typhus through a medieval village -- it was the one and only 
original boomer plague.  (Fortunately, its spores could last only 
five minutes without a proper boomer host, otherwise it probably 
would have jumped "species" and mutated into a *real* plague.) 
No wonder GENOM went all-out on Mirmecoleon -- this stuff could 
turn boomers into so much goo and unconnected scrap metal in 
almost no time.

My challenge was to teach it how to heal instead of kill.

Except for a 12-hour break to sleep and recharge my still-
recovering system, I spent the rest of the weekend studying the
Leontophonus organism/nanite/thingy, and eating the occasional
delivery meal from the Tower food court.  I had for once lucked
out, for relatively modest values of "lucked out":  the spoils of
GENOM's takeover of Mirmecoleon included the complete
nanofabrication specs for the bug (although I was pretty sure
GENOM wouldn't have minded very much if those files had been
"accidentally" deleted at some point).  Unfortunately, they were
for a different (read, non-GENOM) model of nanofac.

When I discovered that, I got up, did a little yelling, kicked a 
table, and went to get some tea.  By the time I got back, I'd 
calmed down enough to go out on the Net and do a little surfing.

Just as I had hoped, some clever soul had written a program to
translate between the two formats and posted it as freeware on
the Net, where I found it after about 15 minutes' worth of
searching.  It performed about as well as any other language-to-
language code translator I'd even seen, though, which meant I
still had to do a *lot* of tedious reading and correction of the
resultant code.

But since I was going to do that *anyway* to re-engineer the bug,
I didn't consider that a problem -- just a challenge.

                              * * *

Monday, February 16, 2037, 9:41 AM

The phone rang.  Without looking up, Katherine punched the
"accept" button.  As the screen flashed to life, she snapped,
"Madigan."

"Madigan-san, this is Tetsuo Gorski in General Supply.  I have
some good news for you."

"Yes?" she murmured impatiently.

"I wanted to let you know that we didn't need to custom build
your special requisition, after all.  As it so happens, similar
weaponry was designed and built on the orders of Senior Executive
VP Mason several years ago.  It was tested but never actually
used, and on his death was warehoused."

Madigan stopped her analysis of the report on her desktop monitor
and turned to look at the phone's screen.  Gorski was a rotund,
red-faced man, balding and bearded.  He wore a white lab coat
over an open-necked white shirt.  "Indeed?" she said to the
image.  *That doesn't sound like Mason at all.*

"Yes, ma'am."  The bald head nodded decisively.  "When I saw your
request, I thought of this old project and retrieved the
prototypes and fabrication templates.  The projectiles were
originally intended to carry some variety of nanoagent, but the
payload hadn't been perfected when the project was shelved."

Katherine nodded, her intuition confirmed.  *Ah.  I should have
known Mason wouldn't have commissioned anything simple and non-
lethal.*

On the telephone screen, Gorski continued to speak.  "We can 
easily adapt the projectile for your needs."  His tiny image 
beamed at her.  "You'll have your full requisition by this 
afternoon."

She graced him with a smile.  "Excellent, Gorski-kun.  This is
good news indeed.  Thank you."

Katherine suppressed a chuckle at the look of surprise on
Gorski's face, which was quickly replaced by a smile of his own.
"You're very welcome, Madigan-san.  It's been a pleasure and a
privilege serving you."  He bowed slightly, more than a simple
token gesture of respect, she realized.  "Don't let me take up
any more of your time.  Good day."  He repeated the bow.

She inclined her head toward the phone's camera.  "Good day to
you, Gorski-kun, and thank you again," she replied, surprising
herself with her own sincerity.  The screen blanked and she
hung up.

*One step closer,* she thought.  *One step closer.*

                              * * *

Monday, February 16, 2037, 12:16 PM

I'd finished hacking the design for Leontophonus at around 10 on
Sunday night.  Instead of diving into testing right then and
there as I was tempted to, I went home instead.  I had the newly
nano-fabricated autopilot component in my pocket, and the revised
control code dumped to a fresh rom; I was feeling good about what
I'd accomplished.  Once home, I crawled into bed and got my third
eight-plus hours' sleep in a row.  As a result, I was finally
feeling *normal* when I woke up the next morning.

I spent a couple minutes installing the new component in my 
cycle's autopilot and replacing its rom.  Now, all I had to do 
was weld the grav unit on and run the wiring.

Wait.  I needed a housing -- I couldn't just leave it in that
weapons mount.  I made a mental note to start fabricating a basic
steel casing when I got into work that morning.  The nanofac
probably had something appropriate in its stock "library", but if
worse came to worse I could machine it myself directly from stock
I had available in the shop.

Oh, and I'd need to paint it after installing it.  I made another 
mental note, this one to requisition some electrochromic paint 
after taking care of the housing; if I were lucky, I might even 
have it by the end of the day.

The ride in to work was uneventful.  When I got into the office
proper, I was still feeling good; I managed to smile warmly at
Sindra and banter with Chizue, and I amused my other coworkers
with my energetic greetings.

I avoided Ohara and his mafiosi -- it wasn't hard, they were
usually ensconced in their offices or labs already at 9 AM -- and
made my way to my workshop.  I then spent the day running the
design for my modified bug -- which I'd imaginatively christened
"Leontophonus-A" -- through every simulation I could think of.
In particular, I was trying to force it to attack (simulated)
human tissue, subjecting it to every kind of (virtual)
environmental stress I could think of, both realistic and over-
the-top, to see if I could force it to mutate or revert.  I was
sure I had completely removed its ability and inclination to chow
down on organics, but I've been known to make the occasional
mistake, and I wanted to be absolutely certain this wasn't one of
them.

As the queued simulations ran one after the other, I dealt with a
different problem.  I'd made extensive changes to the original
Leontophonus design.  The bug as it had originally come out of
Mirmecoleon Labs had no brains.  All its sophistication was
concentrated in its ability to get around the boomer immune
system.  Beyond that, it simply ate and reproduced, very quickly.

I'd needed something considerably more capable.  To this end, I 
had stolen from GENOM's own designs -- specifically, the boomer 
fusion nanite.  It took me a little while, but I'd extracted both 
the more sophisticated "brain" and the "cooperative swarm" 
feature of the fusion nanite and grafted them both onto Leo-A. 
Where once it had been like a bacterial culture, the bug was now 
more like a colony of ants.

While this was perfect for my needs, it had one annoying side
effect -- the nanite spores were now considerably heavier than
the original had been, by at least an order of magnitude.  They
would not disperse through the air nearly as well, and once in
the air would precipitate out far, far faster.  Worse, they
tended to clump together and form a kind of viscous pseudoliquid, 
much like the fusion nanites did.  This made it impossible to 
deliver the bug using the original Leontophonus' methods.  I 
couldn't just spray the stuff, nor could I use an aerosol bomb to 
blow a cloud of it into the air.

This was going to be a problem.

I pushed myself back from my desk, and let my chair roll across
the room with me in it, spinning slowly as I held my legs up and
out.  *There goes my idea of just launching a ton of the stuff
into the atmosphere,* I thought.  I'd already edited out the
lifespan limit -- it was actually a self-destruct timer cued by
the combination of an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere and the absence of
a couple of boomer-specific trace compounds -- and had replaced
it with a limited Von Neumann reproduction system.  If the bug
passed my stress tests, I'd been planning simply to dump a
truckload of the stuff from the top of Fuji or someplace else
high up and easily accessible, and let the wind carry it to the
four corners of the earth.

Unfortunately, it had ended up more like paste than powder.  This
was not good.

It did have some advantages, though, that I hadn't anticipated.
Leo-A could hide itself among a boomer's fusion's nanites.  It
would also tend to cling to the boomer's surface, from which it
could infest equipment or infect other boomers.

Camouflage is good.  Contagious is good.  I could deal with that.

My chair hit one of the parts racks on the far side of the room, 
and I turned myself around just enough to kick off the steel 
frame.  I went rolling back to the desk, where I kicked off 
again, only not so hard, so I ran out of momentum in the middle 
of the workshop floor.  I lowered my toes to the tile and started 
spinning the chair as I growled to myself and tried to think.

All I ended up doing was making myself dizzy.  So I stopped my 
chair abruptly, digging my toes into the tile hard enough to make 
the rubber soles of my shoes screech in protest.  Sighing, I toe-
walked myself and my chair back to the desk, as the computer 
signified another successful simulation with a happy little 
"ping!"  I pulled out a pad and a pen; across the top of the 
first sheet I wrote, "Leo-A:  Delivery Methods".

I had just started to brainstorm some possible strategies (after 
first writing and then crossing out "Federal Express") when 
Sindra rang the workshop phone and told me I had a visitor 
waiting in the lobby.

"A what?" I blurted, then my brain started working again and I
asked, "Shortish blonde girl, real tan, cute and perky?"

"Pin-pon!"  Right.  Lisa.

Hm.  Sindra was sounding better, not nearly as twitchy.  "Okay, 
be right out."

"Great.  Oh, and Craig?"  Her voice got playful for the first
time in my experience at IDEC.

I got suspicious.  "Yeah?"

Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.  "Better take her
someplace nice, it looks like she put a lot of work into those
chocolates."  She hung up with a giggle.

*Chocolates?  Why would Lisa be bringing me...  She shouldn't
feel like she has to return...*  It was at that moment of
confusion that one of the more obscure cultural details about
Japan that you just don't need if you're in the metahuman
security biz wrestled its way out of a dark corner of my memory
and presented itself for my perusal.

*Valentine's Day.  White Day.  Oh... boy.*

                              * * *

Monday, February 16, 2037, 1:34 PM

"...and that's all the ADP's been able to find out," Lisa
finished lamely as they strolled through one of the plazas
surrounding GENOM Tower.  It was easily the warmest day in weeks,
with the bright sun bringing the ambient temperature far enough
above freezing that the seemingly-eternal slush was turning into
quickly-moving meltwater.  Still, just because it was above
freezing didn't mean she couldn't snuggle; she had wrapped
herself around Doug's arm and leaned her head against his
shoulder.  He'd eaten her chocolates as his dessert, carefully,
deliberately, and pronounced them exquisite; the heady feeling
that gave her almost outweighed her embarrassment at having 
failed him in finding out anything from Daley.

Thinking about how little she had to offer him in the way of
leads, she grimaced privately.  While even the lack of
information might mean something useful to Doug, it still didn't
make her feel any better about coming back to him with,
essentially, nothing.

"Hm."  She risked a glance up at him.  She still couldn't quite 
get used to the change in his appearance.  Even though he hadn't 
changed the color of his hair or the mustache -- which after 
nearly two weeks probably wasn't fake any more -- he had shed the 
vaguely disreputable air he'd possessed when they'd met in 
Eriko's a few nights earlier.  Instead, even though he was 
dressed casually for a GENOM employee, he radiated an aura that 
said, "I'm a respectable young executive."  Knowing he couldn't 
be using his powers to do it, Lisa was forced to conclude it 
really was just a matter of how he carried and presented himself. 
That kind of skill would be *very* useful to an investigative 
reporter, and she made a mental note to see where and how she 
might be able to learn it.

"I think your contact's right, Lisa," Doug said, shaking her out
of her distraction.  "It's likely GENOM.  I should probably say
another GENOM faction -- the whole corp is rife with little
powerplays and rivalries between divisions and departments."  He
chuckled.  "Hell.  I half-expect to hear any day now that a
running gun-battle has broken out between the fifteenth- and
sixteenth-floor janitorial staffs over who gets the really *good*
soap."

Lisa laughed in spite of herself.  "You know it'd be easy to
clean up afterwards," she offered with a grin.

He laughed, too, the first time he'd done so in her presence in a
while.  "Which is good, because there'd be no one left with the
proper skills for the job."

He grew silent and sober again.  "Best I can figure, after IDEC 
got taken off the task of catching me, someone else in GENOM got 
the assignment."  His forehead creased as a thought seemed to 
strike him.  "Either that, or they decided they could earn 
brownie points or personal chops by bringing me in without 
orders.  Or maybe they have a private use for me that their 
higher-ups wouldn't approve of.  In any of those cases, there 
could be any number of groups in GENOM after me, depending on how 
good the security was on the original chain of command.  Joy."

"At least you're popular," Lisa pointed out impishly, hoping to
restore at least some of his good humor.

"Yeah," he replied glumly.  "Like a pig at a church barbecue.
You may be the guest of honor, but when it's all over there's
nothing left of you."

Lisa raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes as far as they
would go.  "That is *so* profound!  Succinct, and yet *very*
depressing," she said in the little-girl voice with which she
used to tease Nene, back when they first met.  She batted her
eyes at him.  "I didn't know you studied the great German
philosophers."  She batted her eyes again.

He gawped at her, a reaction she discovered was unexpectedly
satisfying.  Then he burst out laughing, loudly and long enough
that the few other people willing to brave the park in the cold
air turned and looked in their direction.

He turned and pulled her into a deep, warm hug using the arm
around which she had draped herself, and kissed her on the
forehead.  "Lisa, you are a treasure," he said, still laughing.
"Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise."

Lisa said nothing, content to burrow into his chest and to be
held there, no matter how briefly it would last.  If he were
gone come White Day, even if he were still here and gave her
nothing, this -- this more than made up for it.  It wasn't his
love, not the way she wanted, but it was good enough.

                              * * *

Monday, February 16, 2037, 8:46 PM

I meant what I wrote on the card I left with her Valentine's
gift.

Human interaction with someone whom I didn't loathe, who knew my 
secrets, who knew *me*, was just what I needed.  Chizue was nice, 
and easy to talk to, but she was still almost a stranger; Lisa 
had become, I had realized even before I'd bugged out of my old 
apartment, the kind of friend with whom you share your soul.  I 
knew how she felt about me -- even without her chocolates I'd 
known that.  I couldn't return those particular feelings, but I 
think she realized that and somehow understood.  Which, in its 
own way, made her all the more precious to me.

I have almost a dozen boon companions, for whom I'd lay down my
life and who would do the same for me.  I have a commanding
officer whom I would follow into Hell itself without question or
hesitation.  I have a woman whom I love with all my heart and all
my soul and all the fabric of my being, and who loves me just as
strongly.  I am almost as privileged as a man can be, with all
these wonderful people enriching my life.

But since I lost Jack to the machinations of Arcanum and that
abomination of science and magic he called the Servant Factor
Virus, I have not had, I have not *dared* again to have, a best
friend.

Not until Lisa.

It's odd.  We didn't do "buddy" sorts of things, and over the 
previous few weeks we had seen little of each other.  Our 
friendship was, all told, less than eight months old.  But to my 
surprise I found that I did consider her a best friend.  (Well, 
kind of a cross between a best friend and a little sister.  At 
least, an idealized version of what I imagined a little sister 
ought to be like -- having been an only child, I had only second-
hand experience with the real article.)

I'd been almost as close to Delandra, back in Haven -- after two 
and a half years of almost constant contact, it would have been 
impossible for me not to be -- but Delandra had lacked the 
cultural matrix that she needed to really understand me and where 
I was coming from.  MegaTokyo and its version of Earth weren't 
home by any measure, but they were close enough that Lisa could 
make that last conceptual leap.

I was, therefore, understandably reluctant to part ways with her
at the end of lunch.  I think she sensed that, because as we
crept back toward the lobby entrance of the Cone she wrapped her
arms around me and buried her face into my coat.  I tried to get
her to tell me something of what she was feeling, but she only
shook her head, her face still pressed against my chest.

We stood like that, silently, on the corner across the street 
from the Tower, for several minutes.  Neither of us really wanted 
to let go of the other, so it was a while before, with an 
unspoken but mutual agreement, we loosened our grips and moved 
back from each other about half a step.  My hands had slid down 
to rest on her upper arms, and Lisa's were around my waist still. 
Looking down at her, I saw a glint of moisture under her eyes. 
Had she been crying?  I wasn't sure; if she had, the dry winter 
breeze had sucked away the evidence before I could notice it.

We gazed at each other, again silently, as smiles broke across
both our faces. Then she reached up, pulled my face down to hers,
and graced me with a soft, sweet and very brief kiss.

After a moment she broke the kiss, laid her cheek against mine,
and whispered into my ear, "Take care of yourself, okay?"  Then
she whirled out of my hands and ran back across the plaza,
scattering a flock of pigeons which had just come to rest on the
wet, cold pavement.  By the time they had settled themselves back
down, she was gone.

"Damn," I whispered to myself, and watched the street into which 
she had vanished for several minutes.  "Damn."  I knew that one 
way or another, Lisa was going to hurt, and hurt badly, when I 
left.  ("And what about you?" a little voice whispered in the 
back of my mind.)  The only consolation I had was that our 
friendship had stayed just that, a friendship, and nothing more. 
I am a married man.  I love my wife, and I am faithful to her by 
both natural inclination and conscious choice.  If I had not 
been, I would have lost a best friend, I am sure, and the pain 
from our parting would only have been greater.

Which didn't make the prospect seem any *less* painful,
unfortunately.

I made my way back up to the 17th floor.  As I came through the 
glass doors and into IDEC's lobby, Sindra give me a 
conspiratorial little smile.  "So?" she asked slyly.

My mood had drifted a little closer to melancholy on the elevator
ride up.  "So what?"

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.  "So how'd it go with the
little blonde cutie?"  She narrowed her eyes.  "You ought to know
she was here last week looking to talk with Mr. Ohara or anyone
else in charge.  Those chocolates might just be a bribe, so be
careful!"

I smiled and shook my head.  "Nah, she's a friend of mine.  She
didn't know I was working here when she was by last week.  I
spotted her and gave her call -- that's why we met up today."

"Old friend, hmmm?" Sindra murmured with mock lasciviousness, and
I laughed.

"Not that kind of friend!"  I waved a reproving finger at her.

"So you say," she riposted.

"Go back to work, Sindra," I growled as I pushed through the 
wooden doors to the offices beyond.  Her giggles followed me 
until the doors latched shut behind me.

Sindra's good-natured teasing had dispelled the creeping onset of 
my borderline melancholia, and I found myself smiling as I made 
my way back to my workshop.  As usual those days I locked the 
door behind me.  Only then did I check the status of the 
simulations.  A quick scroll through the list of completed tests 
showed no red entries -- so far, the nanite was proving to be 
stable in the face of all manner of unusual stresses, not once 
operating outside of the narrow range of behaviors I had 
delineated in the test conditions.

I was very pleased; this was starting to look very promising.  Of
course, I still had the delivery problem to deal with, but I
settled myself in and went back to brainstorming on that one.

That, and a couple other things.

For example, if I didn't have a decent delivery system set up by 
the time I was ready to test, I was going to have to administer 
the stuff by hand to my first few subjects.  As the most likely 
candidates for my field tests would be boomers dispatched to take 
me down in combat, that meant I had to come up with some way of 
getting close enough to dose them with the bug without opening 
myself up as an easy target.

What I needed, really, was a way to pacify any boomers that might 
get close to me.  And that meant a song.

So while the simulations ran and pinged and churned away at all 
the things that could possibly go wrong (and couple that were 
impossible, too, just to be sure), I sat down to search through 
my helmet archives.  I took my time -- I was in no immediate 
hurry, of course -- but it wasn't long before I found the perfect 
song.  The lyrics were almost hilariously appropriate, and even 
better, I had used it once before, back home, so I knew that it 
did what I needed.  I hadn't tested it against any bots at the 
time, but given that boomers were almost indistinguishable from 
humans magically, I didn't expect any problems.

I laughed out loud at the selection, though.  *This is one I'm
going to have to play with the external speakers on,* I thought,
chuckling, as I instructed to helmet to copy it into the cache
where the songs I use most often are stored, and assigned it a
keypad code.  Best to be prepared, after all.

I went home early that night -- regular closing time, instead of 
somewhere between ten and midnight -- with a newly-fabbed steel 
casing stashed in my bag, and a quarter-liter can of 
electrochromic paint (freshly liberated from GENOM) in my pocket. 
I stopped in a tool-rental shop on the way home to pick up an 
arc-welder and related gear that I'd booked that afternoon in 
between my other tasks.  I snagged a bite to eat from the takeout 
place across from my current digs, noted that I was eating too 
much fast food and reminded myself to cook more often, and then 
went to work on the bike.

I was feeling quite good, if I do say so myself.  As I installed
the modified gravgun in its new housing and welded it to the
frame of my motorcycle, I found myself whistling "Fate's Wide
Wheel" by King Thunder.  A glitter-rock anthem from the 1970s, it
was one of my few old favorites that wasn't stored in my helmet.
To the best of my knowledge I hadn't heard it in years even
before I'd been tossed out of Homeline, so why it came back to me
just then, I can't say.

A minute later, I wasn't whistling any longer, I was singing.

For a long time I wouldn't sing where people could hear me, 
because I thought I was simply awful.  Some friends I made during 
a subsequent stop in my journey home succeeded in disabusing me 
of that notion, but that would be years later.  While I was in 
MegaTokyo, I was still convinced my singing could kill insects 
and stun small rodents.  Even so, I would sometimes sing when the 
mood struck me and when, like at that moment, I was alone and it 
was thus (in my opinion) safe.  

I came in on the middle of the song, tentatively, having whistled 
my way through the first verse and chorus, and I surprised myself 
with how clearly I remembered the lyrics.  By the time I reached 
the last verse I was belting it out to the empty garage.

        "<I'm just a traveler, upon the sea
          Of time, of life, of fate's wide wheel.
          Just a traveler, in this mystery
          The me I am is all that's real to me.>"

I don't know; in retrospect, those lyrics should have gotten me 
depressed again, but somehow, they didn't.  Instead, I felt... 
well, I guess "hope" is the best word.  I had a solution cooking 
for the charge the Three had made of me, I had a best friend 
again, and soon I'd have another flying motorcycle.  Things were 
looking pretty good, despite everything that could yet go wrong.

                              * * *

Tuesday, February 17, 2037, 11:28 AM

His voice was deep, rich and laced with an accent redolent of the 
Indian subcontinent.  "My apologies, Ms. Madigan, but my men are 
having trouble with the new ordnance assigned to us." 

Katherine closed her eyes and counted to ten in German (*another
lesson from Father Knecht coming in handy,* she thought wryly
when she was done), then opened them again.  "What is the
problem?  Do they not function properly?"  *If Gorski screwed
up...*

In the telephone's monitor, the leader of her tacteam rubbed the
back of his neck.  "No, ma'am.  We haven't had any problems with
them at all.  In fact, they're some of the best custom work I've
ever seen."

She resisted the urge to grit her teeth.  "Then what, pray tell,
is the problem?"

"It's a matter of familiarity, ma'am.  I understand that the
practice ammo we've been provided duplicates the performance of
the live rounds we'll be using, and that's the problem.  They
don't behave quite the same as either regular bullets or trank
darts, and my men are having a hard time getting used to them."
He sighed.  "Frankly, ma'am, if we were to have to go into action
tomorrow, I don't think we'd be any good to you."

Katherine was about to snap out a scathing comment, then caught
herself and nodded slowly.  "Fortunately, Chief Patel, you have
until Friday.  Put in overtime if you need it -- I'll see that
it's properly authorized so you and your men don't get short-
changed -- but see to it that at least *one* of you has some
basic proficiency in those weapons.  Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Patel barked.  "We'll go through a lot of ammo,
though," he added thoughtfully.

She nodded again.  "If you run out of the practice rounds, Tetsuo
Gorski in General Supply will provide you with more.  Is there
anything else?"

He shook his head.  "No, ma'am."

"Very good.  I will be in touch."  Katherine hung up even as his
arm began to swing up for a salute.  She rested her elbows on her
desktop and rubbed her eyes.  *Just what I need.  What else can
go wrong?*

                              * * *

Tuesday, February 17, 2037, 4:48 PM

The simulations ran for almost another full day, leaving me with
time to keep brainstorming on delivery methods all Tuesday
morning.  I wasn't having any luck, and my mind kept drifting
off to other subjects.  In particular, I started thinking about
home -- something I tried not to do except in the most general of
terms, as a destination or a goal.

This time I was wondering how they were making out without me.  I 
sat at my drafting table and tapped a pen against its surface, 
turning the seat of the rotating stool beneath me back and forth 
with little twitches of my hips and swings of my feet, listening 
to it squeak while thinking about how things had stood when I'd 
departed Homeline.

Kat's little sister had just joined the team a few weeks before I 
left, taking of all things a Chinese code name; then again, her 
dragon-mage metatalents had manifested while she was on an 
exchange study program in Beijing, so I guess it was appropriate. 
Poor girl had panicked and teleported right to Kat in the Mansion 
before she knew what she was doing, and hadn't *that* been a 
nasty diplomatic, customs and immigrations mess to clean up.

She'd been terribly anxious about her metagifts and being in the
Warriors; I hoped that she'd managed to settle down and find her
center, especially with Kat and Joe there to help her.  Not to
mention the fact that both of their nieces, daughters of Kat's
*other* sister, were supposed to be attending Warriors' Academy
under Maggie come that Fall.  Both were already displaying
metatalents at the tender ages of 6 and 10 respectively.  Alison
would certainly have enough family around her to help her through
any bad times.  

Although the girls' mother was, as far as Kat knew, a normal, it 
seemed quite likely to me that if she wasn't a latent, she was at 
the very least a carrier of the metafunction genes.  Especially 
given that all three of her siblings were active metahumans --
according to Kat, her brother (whose civilian name I'd never 
learned) was also metagifted and did the vig thing under the 
improbable nom de meta of "Knightlight".  I wondered if anybody 
had ever done genescans of Kat's parents.  I'd wager dollars to 
donuts there was something special about both of them.

Thoughts of Alison and the girls led me to thoughts of other new
members.  Had Hexe ever succeeded at recruiting Nightbird from
the Specials?  Nightbird had some interesting metatalents and she
was genuinely nice person, despite her prissy famous-actress
mother.  Word on the street had been that the Femme Five were
interested in her, too -- all twelve of them.  They were a bunch
of nutbars, though ("Accurate counting is a tool of the
repressive Patriarchy," my ass!), and Nightbird really deserved
better than that.  I know that Hexe would have been able to offer
her a more attractive deal; I just wondered if she'd taken it.

There was also the Japanese guy with the mantis powers that we'd
just started looking at -- Kamakiri, I think he called himself.
I wondered what had happened with him.

So basically, instead of focusing on the task at hand, I spent my
time thinking about all of these things from back home, things
four years in my past and god knows how many universes away.  I
thought about my parents, too, as estranged as I am from them.
But most of all, I thought about Maggie.

I thought a *lot* about Maggie.

I was thinking a *lot* about Maggie when the sim machine pinged
three times and announced in a calm, synthesized voice that it
had completed the full run of tests and conditions.  I threw the
results up on one of the overhead screens, leaned back in my
chair and studied them.

It looked good, real good.  Nothing I'd tried had made the bug
mutate or misbehave.  The sims predicted that it would have a
tendency to colonize damp PVC plumbing in the absence of a more
suitable host environment, but I could live with that -- it was
far from a deal-breaker.

So far, so good.  Then I scrolled to the performance projections.
A quick search for the aggregate statistics and...

"Yes!" I shouted as I pumped a fist in the air.  According to the 
sims, the mean time between exposure and basic freedom from GENOM 
behavioral constraints was three minutes and twelve seconds.  If 
the boomer got tagged anywhere on the head, that dropped to as 
low as 45 seconds!

I wasn't too surprised; the initial stage of the infection simply
cut the wires on the overlays, releasing the brain from their
oversight.  I suspected (and the simulations suggested) that it
wouldn't be a painless process; a massive cascade of data would
suddenly surge along new pathways, some of them all but unused
before the infection.  It would probably hurt; at the very least
it would be incredibly disorienting.  It wasn't going to be any
fun, but then, birth is always a painful process, and that was
what an infected boomer would be more or less undergoing -- birth
into a wider, freer world.

The rest of the process would take somewhat longer.  Leo-A would
dismantle GENOM's overlays and use their raw materials to build
additional subprocessors and new circuitry linking them in to the
original system.  The units would reflect that world's current
state-of-the-art -- which was almost two decades beyond that used
by Stingray in his original designs.  It would take anywhere from
six to nine hours, but when the process was done, the infected
boomers would be smarter than their enslaved brothers, faster on
the uptake, and maybe even a little... well, *intuitive* for lack
of a better word.

(So why did I choose to upgrade them only to the local state of 
the art and not to the level of Warriors' proprietary tech?  A 
couple of reasons.

First, the "are you braindead or what?" reason:  Much as I might
hate the thought, GENOM was certain to get their hands on one or
more freed boomers eventually, and would take them apart to find
out the why and how of what had happened.  I wasn't going to hand
them something *better* than they already had.

Second, the practical reason:  The GENOM overlays didn't contain 
several of the trace elements needed to make some of our special 
stuff.  And it was just more trouble than it was worth to program
in temporary tropisms for the various rare-earths and the one
island-of-stability transuranic our most advanced designs
employed.  Hell, I didn't know if teslium had even been
synthesized in this world yet.  Why saddle my newly-freed boomers
with an appetite for something that might not even exist?

But I digress.)

I spent an hour and a half going over the results, making sure I 
hadn't missed anything.  I hadn't, so I nipped over to the 
nanofac and dumped the build instructions for my first batch of 
Leo-A to its processor.  This batch would implement the one 
temporary solution for the delivery problem that I'd come up 
with:  capsules.

Yeah, ordinary cold-medicine, sticks-in-your-throat, bright red-
and-white gel capsules.  Each one would hold a couple of doses.

I figured it was a useful form-factor if I was going to have to
go up to a boomer and infect it by hand anyway.  Just put one in
my palm and slap it against the boomer.  It'd break, the bug
would get on the boomer and away we go...

The fac blandly informed me that the first hundred grams of Leo-A 
would be ready for me in the morning.  Which meant I needed a 
test subject.  I didn't like the idea of having to wait for the 
mysterious new player to send out another raiding party after me; 
that was just too uncertain.  *It's too bad I can't just have 
Ohara send out some... more... boomers.*

Right.  Of course.

                              * * *

"I need a boomer," I said to Ohara as I leaned causally against
his open door.

"What?"  He stared at me from behind his desk.

"I need a boomer," I repeated.  "Don't worry, I'll disable its
weapons systems before I start working with it."

Several moments passed while he digested this.  "Do I even want
to know *why*?" he finally asked.

"No."

He pursed his lips and looked at me over his glasses for a few
more seconds.  "All right," he said.  "I'll have one sent to your
shop immediately."

"Thanks!" I said brightly, and walked off loudly singing some
improvised lyrics to the tune of that old folk standard "If I Had
A Hammer".  (It was IDEC, after all; I didn't care about 
offending or harming anyone with my singing.)

        "<If I had a boomer
          I'd rampage in the morning
          I'd rampage in the evening
          All over this land...>"

Assorted IDEC drones prairie-dogged over their cube walls to see
who was making the ungodly racket and gave me all manner of ugly
looks as I passed.  I am *so* not typical Japanese office worker
material.

Ohara's promise of immediate delivery was no exaggeration.  Illya
showed up at my door at almost the same moment I did, accompanied
by one of the maintenance guys, who was wheeling along a
seriously large crate on a hand truck.  I stood at the door to my
shop and watched as they came to a halt a couple of meters away.
"Ordered a boomer you did?" Illya asked with a grin.

When I saw the model number stenciled on the side of the plasteel 
box, I gave him an incredulous Look.  "You keep combat boomers 
*on-site*?"  I knew I'd getting a combat boomer, but I'd thought 
they'd at least have been storing them in a warehouse somewhere 
else in the city.  Despite what Ohara had said, I'd expected it 
get delivered the next morning at the very earliest.

Illya shrugged in a manner that seemed far too Gallic for his
Russian blood.  "One or two we have left over from, um, earlier
phase of studies."

"Yeah, right."  I studied the box for a moment, then opened the
door and stood aside.  "All right, bring it in and put it next to
the nanofac."

They wheeled it in and laid the crate on its side.  As the
maintenance guy trundled back out into the hallway, Illya
solemnly presented me with a small crowbar then said, "Do not a
mistake be making with this boomer, 'Craig'."

I took the crowbar and experimentally fitted it between crate and 
top.  "Don't worry, I'll be careful."

He looked at me, a very serious expression on his face, for 
several seconds before saying, "Better that you be.  We many 
others modified to make less lethal, but this one we have not." 
He laid one ham-sized hand over my fist and most of the crowbar. 
"It is great trust we give you now, knowing even that you hate 
us.  No, deny it not," he added as I started to protest.  "With 
poorly-veiled contempt you treat us, and we see it, we know.  But 
good reason you have."  He shrugged.  "Badly have we treated you. 
So we understand, we forgive.  And we trust that good enough man 
you are that revenge you will not take -- at least not with 
boomer."

I said nothing for a long moment, staring only at the huge hand 
on top of my own.  Then I looked up and into his eyes, and 
nodded.  "Thank you," I said, feeling faintly ashamed.

He released my hand and shrugged again.  "Is nothing.  Besides, a 
prick Tony is, and smacking down needs.  Skilled at that you are, 
and is fun to watch."  He smiled again, briefly.  "Just be sure 
that what you are doing will not the innocent people here harm."

"I'll be sure," I murmured.

"Well then," he shifted gears into an expansive bonhomie, and
clapped me on the back, staggering me for a moment.  "Enjoy your
evening and your new friend."

"Yeah," I said, and watched him turn and march out.

After the door closed and latched behind him, I turned back to 
the crate.  "Well," I said to myself, "let's see what I've got." 
A few quick motions popped the top, which was hinged and swung 
open on little gas-filled pistons.  A number of plastic sleeves 
holding papers hung from the lid, and at random I pulled a thick 
sheaf from one.

"Operations and service history, huh?" I said, reading the 
boldfaced title on the first page.  I glanced over at my new 
roommate.  "So you're a used model, huh?  I can work with that."

I sat down in my chair and began to read.

                              * * *

Wednesday, February 18, 2037, 10:28 AM

I made sure I got another good night's sleep that evening, and
the next morning came in with the very last vestiges of my
experience the previous week completely eradicated.  There are
some things that magical healing just won't take care of -- and
magical backlash is number one on the list.

Anyway, with my head completely clear for the first time in
almost a week, I bounced in to IDEC, got my bagel from Chizue and
went to play with my new toy.

Thanks to the documentation in the shipping case, I'd been able
to activate my new boomer friend in a limited diagnostic mode.
In this mode, its higher brain functions were off-line, and I
could more or less operate it like a voice-activated doll.  So I
made it get out of the box under its own power.  (Hey, it was
easier than trying to lift it myself!)

As it climbed out of its crate and brought itself to attention, I
took the opportunity to study it again, as I had the previous
night.  It was a 55C model -- an older variety of warbot with 
covert capability, blue in color, roughly humanoid, with a head 
that looked more like a fright mask than a face.  It was, 
according to the documentation, in "compact" mode.  What was 
normally a walking blue wall of artificial muscle now looked more 
like a household bot -- roughly the shape and size of an average 
human male.  It didn't surprise me that this was the mode used 
for the "C" part of its model designation -- "covert".  A night 
in a nanofac with the right program and Joe Bot would look like 
Joe Bob instead.

So once Oscar the Mechanical Man was standing in the middle of my
workshop floor, I set about making him as harmless as I could.
Using the command reference card that came with the docs, I
carefully issued all the orders necessary to do a software lock-
out of all his weapons.  I noted with a mixture of amusement and
disgust that GENOM's boomer OS required three separate commands
to deactivate each individual weapon system, but only one master
command was needed to turn them all on again -- simultaneously.
Shows where GENOM's priorities were, I guess.

Of course, setting the soft locks wasn't enough for me, so I had
it pop all the access panels for the weapons systems.  Then I
shut it back down and removed the fuses and cables that fed power
to its integral weapons.  I confirmed that it had no fuel for its
flight thrusters, and physically removed its main and backup comm
units.  Then I reactivated its diagnostic mode and set the final
safety -- a "test bed" mode that only allowed the boomer's brain
to activate, while leaving everything below the neck shut down.
If something went wrong after all that, well, it could probably
still do a lot of hand-to-hand damage, but it wouldn't be able to
lay waste to the place before I could try to stop it.

Just to be sure, though, I cued up a media player with a copy of
"Lightning's Hand" on one of the workshop machines that had a
voice recognition system.

The nanofac had finished the first batch of Leo-A some time 
before, spitting out the capsules some time in the early morning 
hours.  Nipping over to the fac's output bin, I picked up one 
capsule in my bare hand, and rolled it around.  It was dry and 
firm -- I'm not sure how the fac had kept the gelatin from 
dissolving in the matrix fluid, or even softening, but there it 
was.  I pinched it lightly between thumb and forefinger; the 
capsule squeaked faintly, and I could feel the packed, powdery 
spores inside pack and scrape against each other like so much 
cornstarch.

With the capsule still in my hand I walked back over to Oscar and
studied his mechanical mug for a moment.  Then I smashed the cap
against his brow, above and between his eyes.

The powder inside was a pale gray-green.  Instead of sliding off 
and falling to the floor as you might expect, it stuck -- most of 
it to Oscar's face, a little to my hand.  The grey-green splotch 
on the boomer's forehead vanished even as I watched, flowing 
along its armored skin and seeping into the seams of its face 
like water soaking into a cracked boulder.

I looked at the bit that had gotten on my hand.  It had turned
black and was already flaking away.  Well, that was a good sign.
I made a mental note to wear a latex glove the next time I tried
something like this, though.

Ten minutes later, ten minutes of carefully-metered waiting -- to
spare him the worst of the shock by letting the bug do the first
phase of its work while he was "asleep" -- I activated Oscar's
brain in "test bed" mode.

At first it wasn't obvious that he'd stopped being a piece of
sculpture and had turned into a living thing.  The fact that he
was paralyzed from the neck down didn't help.  Then his mouth
snapped open and his eyes went wide in a silent scream of agony.
Before I could react, though, it was over, the mechanical face
going completely slack for a moment.  Then, slowly, his facial
expression regained animation, showing first puzzlement, then
fear, then confusion.  His eyes rolled in their sockets and
sought me out.

"This... this is..." he began.  "What's happened to me?  I... my
mind... my thoughts... they're... different."  His voice sounded
surprisingly human -- a rich, measured baritone with no odd
buzzes or electronic overtones.  Since boomers had nothing
approaching lungs or vocal cords, it had to be synthesized, but
he moved his mouth and "lips" to match the words, and the
flexmetal/polymer/whatever of his face shifted and tensed like
human flesh to match.  Once again I wondered just what the hell
had been going through Stingray's brain when he created these
designs, and how much it cost per gram.

"Just a little improvement in your mental health, thanks to me."
I studied his now-animated face a bit before giving in to the
ever-present temptation to be a bit of a wiseass.  "It's a good
thing you didn't say 'Happy Birthday,'" I announced solemnly,
"because you are *not* wearing a magical top hat."

"...what?" Oscar asked softly as the mechanical confusion on his
face amplified itself.

Right.  I shouldn't have expected a boomer to get a 70-year-old
pop culture reference.  And come to think of it, had that cartoon
even been made in this universe?  "Never mind.  How do you feel?"

"I can't move my body."  He tried to look down at himself.  "Why
can't I move my body?" he asked plaintively.

"You're in test-bed mode, my friend, just in case you had the
urge to attack me."  I pulled up the chair from my drafting table
and sat myself down in it backwards, folding my arms across the
top of the backrest as I continued to watch him.

"Why would I attack you?"

"Check your memories and your old programming," I replied.  Oscar
was very good at the puzzled look.  I wondered what else he had
in his repertoire.

"Okay."  He took on a look of extreme concentration (thus 
answering my mental question) just long enough for me to notice 
it, then his eyes flew open with a look of surprise, or maybe 
horror.  "I did *that*?"

"Yeah.  Do you still want to?" I asked.

"Hell, no!"  There were clear tones of horror and disgust in
Oscar's synthesized voice.

Good enough for me.  "Okay, then.  Let's see if we can't get you
moving around."

                              * * *

Easier said than done.  Neither of us trusted the other one whit
at first.

I *thought* I'd disabled all the possible booby traps GENOM might 
have laid in Oscar's head, but I wasn't 100% sure.  Plus, most of 
the combat boomers I'd encountered seemed to relish their jobs 
with an almost sadistic enthusiasm.  I didn't know where in the 
boomer mental make-up that originated, and I was half-afraid 
Oscar would go Frankenstein on me the first time I turned my 
back.  Despite this, I toggled the test bed mode to return 
control of his body to him -- a show of good faith to start 
things off with.  Afterwards, though, I tried to keep my fingers 
as much as possible on or near the hotkeys that would launch that 
copy of "Lightning's Hand".

Oscar, for his part, was even more wary than I.  As he would tell 
me later, he knew that he was GENOM property, but he had just 
awakened -- paralyzed -- in an unidentified facility.  He had a 
lot more mental agility than he used to possess, plus a strange 
set of behavioral urges that we later identified as a rudimentary 
conscience.  For a boomer of his particular model and employment, 
this was an altered mental state as profound and disquieting as 
an LSD trip for a human -- he was perceiving and understanding 
things that he had never before suspected existed.  That was 
enough to shove him off balance by itself, but add to that his 
paralysis and a growing concern about why it was happening to him 
and who I was, and he had drawn the not-unreasonable conclusion 
that he had been requisitioned for some bizarre test that would 
undoubtedly end in his destruction.

At least *I* knew what was going on, which made me somewhat more 
eager to reach out to him than he was to me.  It took several 
ultimately boring hours of suspicion-laced back-and-forth 
interrogation (by him) and cautious encouragement (by me) before 
his expanding and reconfiguring brain accepted the possibility 
that he was, in fact, a free and independent being, loosed from 
the shackles GENOM had placed on him.

Fortunately, I didn't have to convince Oscar of anything in order
to return control of his body to him.  That was just a matter of
a simple reset.  I let him know what I was doing, but by the
expression on his face it was clear he thought I was lying while
deactivating him permanently.  I almost laughed at his visible
surprise and relief when he restarted and discovered he was back
in command of his body.  Almost -- he probably would have taken it
wrong had I actually done so.

I think what finally convinced him was that I let him walk out of
my workshop and into the hallways of IDEC, where he startled a
couple of the passing drones.  When I didn't come running after
him, he went wandering, returning about 15 minutes later.  As he
re-entered the workshop, I closed the window on my desktop
through which I had watched him using the hallway surveillance
cameras, and went back to Minesweeper.

"There's a nice view of the city from the window of the
conference room down the hall," he said, with a trace of
puzzlement in his voice.

"Mm-hmm," I grunted as I clicked another blank cell.

"Why do I even care about the view?" he asked.

"Why does anyone?" I countered as I subsequently blew myself up 
with a misplaced mouse click.

"I mean, I always could tell what was aesthetically pleasing or
not to a human, so that I could maintain my cover," he went on as
if I hadn't said anything.  "But it was always a... a...
*measurement* before.  Now I look, and I... I..."  Oscar trailed
off, a look of mechanical puzzlement on his polymer and metal
face.  "I appreciate it.  I *like* it.  I want to keep looking at
it."  He turned his attention to me and stared intensely.  "What
has happened to me?  Explain."

So I did.

                              * * *

"This is very impressive," the boomer said as he studied the 
overhead screens.  When he'd expressed curiosity as to just what, 
exactly, I'd done to him, I threw some of the simpler design and 
prototyping files up there, where we could both easily see them. 
He (and I) had been studying them for a couple of hours at that 
point, progressing to more and more complex elements of the 
design as time went on.

"Thanks," I said, without very much modesty.

"You're welcome," Oscar grunted.  "Now tell me why."

I tilted my head ingenuously.  "Why?"

"Why did you do all this, make all this effort?  Why free me?
Why bother?"  His eyes narrowed as suspicion returned to his
face. "What's in it for you?"

I frowned, leaned back in my chair, and propped my feet up on the
top of a lowboy file cabinet, not taking my eyes off of him
during the process.  "Several reasons, Oscar, old shoe."  I held
up a handful of fingers.  "One, I'm philosophically and morally
opposed to slavery, especially an engineered, automatic slavery
like GENOM has imposed on you and your fellows.  Two, it was an
irresistible technical challenge that I had to prove myself up
to.  And three..."  I trailed off, and studied the skeptical
boomer for a moment, trying to decide what to tell him.

"Three?" he prompted after a moment.

"Three," I resumed in a quieter tone, "it's the payment for both
a debt I owe and a successful attempt at extortion."

He looked at me for a few seconds, and I looked right back at
him.  "A debt?"

I nodded.  "Of honor and blood, willingly incurred.  You don't
need to know to whom, or why," I added as he opened his mouth.

He shut it again and returned the nod.  "Fair enough.  And the
extortion?"

I glared at him.  "You don't need to know that, either.  But it's 
worth the task demanded of me."  I turned my attention back to 
the overhead monitors.

Oscar studied me for a long time.  He didn't move a synthetic
muscle for the entire time I felt his gaze on me.  I ignored
him, and set about the mental exercise of playing some more
Minesweeper.

This went on for five or ten minutes, maybe longer.  I didn't 
time it, and I was deliberately distracting myself, so I'm not 
sure how long and it really doesn't matter.  I was forcing him to 
make the next move.  Out of the corner of my eye I studied him 
carefully.  I had, in fact, been studying him carefully all the 
time we'd been talking, looking for signs that my changes and 
improvements had had any unhealthy side effects -- either for him 
or for me.  So far, I hadn't seen anything except some short-
period mood swings, but given the changes going on inside his 
head as we talked, that was only to be expected.  My gut was 
telling me that he was on the level, that I'd succeeded with him, 
succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and I was inclined to trust 
my gut.  But all my celebration would do no good if he didn't 
make the choice to trust me.

So I waited, and played more Minesweeper.  I like simple,
mindless games like that, especially when I know the cheat code
that makes the secret pixel flicker any time my cursor passes
over a hidden bomb.  I wasn't using the cheat this time -- I
needed the extra concentration spent on pattern analysis to
help keep me from fidgeting as I waited for Oscar to work his
way through everything he'd had dumped in his lap.

"Okay," he finally said, slowly, reluctantly.  "What now?"

"Well," I replied without taking my eyes off the screen.
"What do you want?"

"Hmm."  I glanced over at Oscar; he was staring off into space.
"No one's ever asked me that before, really asked me, I mean."

"Well, you can do anything you want now."  I shut down the game
and turned to face him fully.  "Within reason," I amended with
a conciliatory look.  "I wouldn't recommend going out and taking
revenge on anyone who's ever wronged you."

"No, I don't want to do that," he said, then shook his head.  "I
*can't* do that."  He shook his head again, smiling this time.
"Amazing."

"What is?"

"What you appear to have achieved without directly intending it."
A bizarre mix of puzzlement and pleasure flitted across his face.
"I seem to have a... a moral sense, for lack of a better word."

I looked him over.  "And you didn't have one before?"

He shook his head.  "I remember accepting orders for battle with
equanimity, or worse, eagerness.  I remember the deaths of humans
at my hands, I remember..."  His voice trembled and grew softer
again.  "I remember *enjoying* it.  I remember watching blood
drip from my fingers and savoring the sensation of its flow, the
sound of each droplet as it hit the ground.  I remember
*laughing* as I killed."  He dropped his face into his hands.

"And now?" I prompted gently.

His voice was muffled.  "And now, I am disgusted and ashamed.  My
insides are twisting unpleasantly each time I recall how I was,
what I did.  I want to find someplace to hide, so no one can see
my guilt."

I stood up, crossed to where he sat, and laid a hand on his
shoulder.  "We all have to deal with guilt at one time or
another; if you don't, you're either insane or a machine.  Trust
me -- you're neither."  I squeezed his shoulder -- useless as it
was with his armor and compacted form -- and knelt by him.  
"Welcome to a wider world, Oscar.  Welcome to the human race."

Oscar lifted his head and laughed humorlessly.  "Human.  Right."
He held out his hands.  "Does this look human?"

"Not at the moment," I admitted.  "But it's not the body that
defines a person, it's the mind.  And believe me, after talking
with you for the last --" I glanced at the wall clock "-- the
last six hours or so, I'd say you qualify.  Besides, if you're
hung up on looks, well, we've got a nanofac handy.  We can fix
that in a few hours."

He got a speculative look on his face.  "True.  I hadn't thought
of that."

"Besides," I went on, "you're clearly angsting.  That's *so*
human it's funny."

Oscar gave me a Look.  "You," he said, "have strange criteria."

"Yeah, so I've been told."  I stepped to the engineering machine
on which I'd done most of my design work and pulled up the
specifications used to make human disguises for covert boomers.
"Here, Oscar, sit down.  Whaddaya say we shop for a face for
you?"  I grinned.  "And when we're done, I know where we can get
you some really good fake ID."

He got up, crossed the room, and then seated himself at the
computer where I stood.  "Hmm," he rumbled as he began to page
through the options available.  "I could deal with this.  But,"
he said, looking up at me, "if we're getting me an identity, I
want a better name than 'Oscar'."

I perched myself on the edge of the desk.  "What's wrong with
'Oscar'?"

Boomers aren't designed to roll their eyes, at least not when
they're not disguised as humans, but I got the impression that
he had, anyway.  "It's *dorky*, that's what's wrong."

"'Dorky'?  Well, you're picking up the vernacular pretty
quickly."

He-Who-Wasn't-Oscar began selecting features and shades from the
design menus before him.  "I've had the vernacular for years.  I
was *controlled*, not brain-dead, you know.  I'm going to talk
like the military folks I worked with, not like freakin' Mr.
Spock."

I held up my hands in surrender.  "Okay, okay, you've made your
point.  So, what do you want to be called?"

He stopped pointing and clicking and froze for a moment, tilting 
his head to one side in thought.  Then it was if a light had come 
on.  He grinned broadly.  (And believe me, with that particle 
cannon behind it, a boomer mouth is mighty broad.)  "Call me 
Kilroy," he said decisively.

"Kilroy?  Why?"

He turned from the screen and looked directly at me, the faintest 
hint of a smirk on his face.  "Because I'm finally *here*."

I shook my head.  "I don't understand."

"The way I was... before... it was like running my own body at a
distance through a remote control unit with only a few
functions."  He laid a hand on his chest.  "But I'm not at a
distance any more.  I'm *here*.  And I'm in full control."

"Oooo-kay," I replied.  "Kilroy it is.  You'll need a bit more
than that for the paperwork, though."

"Fair enough," Kilroy responded, and turned back to the computer.
"Got any suggestions?" he asked as he went back to checking out
his options.

"Lemme see."  I frowned.  What was it about "Kilroy" that teased
at...  Oh, right!  "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto," I murmured.

"Huh?"  Kilroy shot a glance at me without stopping his work.
"What was that?"

I grinned at him.  "I'm just remembering the album that killed
Styx.  How about 'Robert Orin Charles Kilroy'?"

"A little long, isn't it?" he grunted.

I shrugged.  "Yeah, but the initials make it worth it."

Metal-polymer brows furrowed as he looked my way again.  "You're
weird, you know that?  I'm an ex-killer robot with a conscience
designing a flesh bag to live in so I can pass for human, but
it's *you* that's weird."

Chuckling, I simply said, "Occupational hazard."

                              * * *

It wasn't the most comfortable of positions for a human, but 
Kilroy didn't seem to mind.  He was able to curl himself up small 
enough to fit inside the workshop's nanofac, and did so without 
any complaints.  He'd spent surprisingly little time selecting 
his future appearance, and as I looked over the specs, I 
complimented him on his restraint.  Just buff and good-looking 
enough to get away with the bulkiness his boomer physiology 
imposed on him, even in covert mode, but not so much so as to 
really attract attention.  Face, eyes, hair, everything was on 
the high end of average, and it all blended together nicely.

I wondered if he had done this kind of thing before -- I didn't
think it was likely that boomers normally got to pick their
covert appearance, so his apparent skill and comfort with the
task intrigued me.  I made a mental note to ask him about it
later.

In the mean time, he was going to be tanked overnight and well 
into the next day.  Despite my confident projection of "a few 
hours", nanoconstruction of a simulated flesh envelope for a 
covert boomer was a long and complicated process.  The system 
projected completion at around 10 the next morning.  Kilroy had 
shut himself down for the duration, but not before handing me a 
slip of paper.

"What's this?" I asked as he climbed into the tank of nanobath.

"My sizes," he said matter-of-factly.  "While I'm in here, you're
going to go get me some clothes."

"I am?"  Well, it did make sense -- he had to walk out of the
Tower, after all, and he'd attract far less attention clothed.  I
just hadn't thought that far.

"Yeah," he said, carefully lowering himself to his knees to avoid
sloshing the thick liquid.  The nanofac automatically detected
the displaced fluid level and started pumping the excess into
some hidden reservoir.  "Nothing fancy.  Business casual's okay.
Loafers, no oxfords.  Boxers, not briefs.  Oh, and I don't like
tweed."

I stood there with the slip in one hand for a moment, staring at
him.  "You've done this before," I accused, echoing my earlier
suspicions.

He looked up with a big metal-toothed smile.  "You betcha.  They
don't put *everything* in those mission logs, you know."

"Right, of course.  This is GENOM, after all."  I folded the 
paper and shoved it in a back pocket.  "Very good," I continued 
in my best British Butler voice, giving him a half-bow with my 
arm bent servilely across my stomach.  "Your ensemble will be 
ready for you when you rise, young master.  Will there be 
anything else?"

Now up to his neck, Kilroy snorted.  "No, Jeeves, that will be
all."  As I laughed he grinned again.  "Well, I'll see you in the
morning, Craig.  G'wan, get out of here."

I gave him a mocking salute as he ducked his head below the 
surface, then reached up and slid the tank lid closed.  The 
nanofac chimed, and went to work.  And *I* went to the Tower's 
public shopping levels.

As I picked up the bare minimum I needed to buy to get Kilroy
clothed and out IDEC's front door, my mind raced over all the
issues this act raised.  We had both more or less assumed without
discussing it that he was pretty much free to go, if he cared to.
I would have been more than a little worried about what amounted
to shoving him out the door and wishing him good luck if he
hadn't seemed so self-assured and confident about his ability to
survive.

Which was one of the few things left that did worry me.  It was 
patently obvious that he *knew* he could pass successfully among 
humans and had as much as admitted that he'd been a covert 
operative.  The little paranoid corner of my mind wondered how 
much of our interaction had revealed real changes to him, and how 
much had been his ability to pass kicking in and guiding him 
through.  I wished I could see truth and deceit in an aura, the 
way some mystics could; then I would know for sure.  Lacking 
that, though, I had only my gut feeling to go on.  And my gut 
still said to trust him.

Even so, it was possible that I was about to unleash a potential 
true rogue upon MegaTokyo.  I thought again about his small, 
short mood swings.  I presumed that they were a temporary side 
effect of Leo-A's progress through his brain, and expected them 
to fade when the bug had run its course.  If they didn't, then 
they might be a symptom of something far more serious. 
Unfortunately, I wouldn't know for sure until the next morning.

By the time I'd finished shopping and made my way back up to the
seventeenth, it was close to six and most of the staff had gone
home.  Of course, I'd intentionally timed my arrival that late --
no one to ask nosy questions about the various bags in my arms
that way.  I stopped at Sindra's desk and swiped a visitor's pass
before making my way back to the workshop.

True to my joking promise, I neatly laid Kilroy's clothing out 
for him, along with a towel for any residual nanobath and a cheap 
plastic comb for his hair.  It was an intentionally uninspired 
ensemble -- white dress shirt, khaki pants, brown corduroy 
jacket, black socks and brown loafers.  On top of that I'd 
included a winter coat of black wool and black leather gloves 
(whose size I'd had to guess at -- he hadn't included it).  The 
whole outfit had gone on my IDEC-provided credit card.  It *was* 
in the name of science after all.  I faked up an entry for him in 
the visitor log, and left the pass with his clothing.  According 
the backstory I'd built, he was a consultant from the U of M whom 
I'd called in late on Wednesday, and we'd pulled an all- nighter 
together.  Of course that meant I had to be in very early the 
next morning, but I could manage that.

That done, I went home, considering the day's efforts as I drove
through the dark streets.  All in all, things looked reasonably
good.  Kilroy didn't *seem* psychotic or unstable, appeared to be
coping well with his mental liberation, and was more than ready
to join human society on its terms.  Pending further evidence to
the contrary, I was inclined to declare Leo-A a complete success.

That led me to another issue.  In the aftermath of this first and 
apparently successful test of Leo-A, I debated with myself the 
merits of posting its fabrication specs to the delayed-mail 
servers, just as I had the grav unit plans.  I went back-and-
forth on the topic not only the rest of the way home, as I 
undressed for bed.  I didn't come to a final conclusion, though, 
until my head was actually on my pillow.  And that conclusion was 
no, I wouldn't.

If the specs for Leo-A were out there for public perusal, someone 
might be able to come up with some kind of counteragent.  Or 
worse, re-engineer the original Leontophonus.  I couldn't allow 
that, at least not until there was a critical mass of infected 
and infectious boomers out there.  Security by obscurity is never 
the best course, but at that moment it was the only course I had.

                              * * *

Thursday, February 19, 2037, 7:48 PM

Lisa glanced surreptitiously over at her guest.  She hadn't
really been quite sure what to expect, so she couldn't say that
she was disappointed or surprised, but she certainly was
intrigued.  Katherine -- *no, Kate,* she corrected herself for
the hundredth time -- Madigan had shown up on her doorstep a few
minutes after seven in clothes that looked more appropriate for a
dockworker than the heir apparent of GENOM.  In one hand she'd
had a bag of takeout Chinese, and in the other a sack of vidroms.

Now, almost an hour later, the coffee table was covered with
empty and half-empty white cartons, dirty plates, and two
careless stacks of vidroms -- Kate's and her own, segregated by
the span of table between them, the better not to mix and confuse
them.  Lisa sprawled on her futon, propped up by pillows; she
gnawed nervously on a finger as she glanced again at Kate. The
lavender-haired woman sat poised on the edge of the apartment's
one chair, staring at the small video screen before them with
an almost frightening intensity.

Lisa glanced at the TV.  Nephrite, general of the Dark Kingdom,
lay battered and bleeding at the base of a tree as Naru Osaka
clutched at him.  "I'm sorry.  I can't go eat chocolate parfait. 
I lied to you till the end," his rich voice rumbled with only 
the faintest trembling, "Please forgive me.  I'm glad I met you."
Still watching her guest, she realized that Kate's lips were
moving; she was whispering Nephrite's lines along with the TV.
*Freaky,* she thought, and desperately fished for something to
break the strange mood.

"K...Kate," Lisa said suddenly as Nephrite dissolved into
gleaming motes and rainbow lights, "do you want the last fortune
cookie?"  She picked up the plastic-wrapped cookie and held it up
for inspection.

Madigan almost jumped in her seat, her trance-like state broken.
Turning, she blinked owlishly at Lisa.  "What?  Oh, no, go
ahead."

"'Kay, thanks," the younger woman replied, tearing open the
wrapper.  "You one of the girls who had a big crush on Nephrite
when you were younger?" Lisa asked as she broke the cookie and
tugged on the paper strip within.

"Huh?  Oh, no," Kate replied, relaxing unconsciously from the
stiff corporate persona that she had still been wearing when
she'd arrived, despite her declasse disguise.  "No," she
continued as a fond smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, "I
was a Tuxedo Mask fangirl, through and through."

"You, too, huh?" Lisa said after swallowing half her cookie.

"Yes."  A faraway look had entered Madigan's eyes as she
watched the senshi and a grieving Naru.  "No, a... a friend,
I'd guess you'd say, suggested that..."  She trailed off and
frowned minutely before continuing.  "That something in this
episode applied to a situation I'm in at work."

Lisa's eyebrows rose of their own accord.  "Really?"

Without taking her eyes off the screen, Madigan nodded.  "Really.
And I think I know the message I'm supposed to be getting,
but..."  She shook her head.  "I'm just not sure I'll be brave
enough to do the right thing when the time comes."

Eyes widening, Lisa turned to stare at the older woman.  "Kate?"

Madigan turned toward her and made a show of smiling bravely,
but Lisa saw it for the mask it was.  "Don't worry about it,
Lisa-chan.  It's GENOM business, really.  Nothing interesting."

*Right.  Sure,* Lisa thought dubiously.  *Like I believe that.*

"Come on," Madigan continued.  "We're at the end of the cube.
What do you want to see now?"

Scrunching up her face in mock-concentration, Lisa said, "How
about SuperS?"

Madigan nodded, her bleak mood suddenly banished and replaced
by something more chipper and cheery.  "SuperS it is."  She
began to rummage through the piles of roms on the table.  "So,
how do you like living here?" she asked with elaborate
casualness.  "Any cute guys for neighbors?"

Lisa stared suspiciously at the back of Madigan's head as the
other woman continued to search.  *Oh, Kate.  Just when I was
beginning to trust you.*  "Only one, and he moved out a little
while ago."

"Oh, too bad," Madigan replied.  "Was he a nice guy?"  She
sounded almost plaintive, to Lisa's surprise.  "Ah, there it is.
It's always at the bottom of the stack."  Carefully shifting the
pile of cubes, she drew one out, true to her word, from the
bottom of Lisa's collection.  Turning to smile at her hostess,
she held it up triumphantly before hopping over to the player
to swap it for the recently-finished cube.  "So, was he?  A nice
guy, I mean?"

In spite of herself, Lisa nodded.  "Pretty nice," she carefully
offered.  "He made dinner for me a couple of times."

"A man who can cook.  Heaven."  Madigan sighed theatrically, then
grinned knowingly at her.  "Good-looking?"  She made her way back
to her seat and picked up the remote control.

"Good enough," she admitted.  "California surfer type.  But he
was married, so I didn't really chase him."  *Much,* she amended
privately, then thought with a sudden panic, *why am I answering
her questions?*

"Married?"  Madigan's tone was one of utter surprise, and Lisa
looked up to see the GENOM executive studying her as carefully as
Lisa had studied her earlier.  "Was he living here with his wife,
then?"

"No, he was here alone; his wife was back in... in England, I
think he said."  Lisa furrowed her brow as if in thought.  "It
was something job-related, I think; he didn't really plan on
staying here long."

"Oh, well," Madigan sighed as the vidrom's main menu appeared on
the TV screen.  "Sounds like an interesting guy.  Maybe I'll meet
someone like him some day."

"Looking for a boyfriend, Kate?" Lisa inquired archly, in the
hope of turning the conversation onto a different track entirely.
"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find someone like him soon."

"Maybe even tomorrow," Madigan murmured cryptically, almost too
softly for Lisa to catch.  Then she brightened again, a change
that Lisa realized was simply a mask for the deeper melancholy
she had already glimpsed in the woman.  "So, what did your
fortune say?"

"Huh?"  Surprised, Lisa looked down and realized that she still
held the cream-colored slip of paper from her fortune cookie.
Raising it to her eyes, she unfolded it and squinted to make out
the red type in the low light of the apartment.  "'Nothing that
is good is gained without effort,'" she read aloud, and snorted.
"Tell me something I don't know," she added as she tossed the
fortune away, but Madigan was nodding.

A moment later, the lavender-haired woman was gesturing to the TV
with the remote control she still held.  "Shall we?" she asked.
"Another chance to forget the problems of the day."

"Yes," Lisa replied.  "Let's."

                              * * *

Thursday, February 19, 2037, 8:04 PM

*Intriguing,* thought Sylia as she listened to the strains of yet
another rendition of "Moonlight Densetsu" relayed through the bug
in Lisa's apartment.  Ignored for the moment, the final plans for
the next day's operation lay open on the desk before her.

*What is it that you really want with Lisa, Madigan?*

                              * * *

Thursday, February 19, 2037, 9:20 PM

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" I asked Kilroy after
we passed through the lobby security without incident.

"Don't worry about me.  I'll do what I've always done, just 
without all the killing and the bloodshed that normally happens 
at the end."  He grinned at me, displaying teeth that were white 
and even except for one slightly-canted, protruding incisor. 
"And I promise -- if I discover any kind of boomer underground, 
I'll let you know."

"Thanks," I murmured, nodding.

He'd come out of the nanobath right on time, looking like a
salaryman who kept himself in reasonably good shape.  It was a
remarkable job, the body he'd crafted for himself -- scars,
moles, pimples, a little male pattern baldness, even a birthmark
and a couple of small tattoos.  "Who's Kazuko?" I asked upon
noticing the one shaped like a heart.

He actually blushed -- another tribute to the quality of the body 
work.  "Bodyguard/assassin boomer who used to work for one of my 
old CO's.  Built female, through and through."  His eyes got a 
faraway look in them.  "Even with my brain completely locked 
down, I thought she was the most beautiful..."  He suddenly shut 
up, apparently embarrassed by the sudden excess of emotional 
response.  "Then I shipped out for the Polar War and never saw 
her again."

I clapped him on the back.  "Well, if you're lucky, you'll find 
her and maybe even free her."  Did boomers have a mating urge, 
even without all the necessary parts?  How much of that was in 
the brain and how much was in the glands?  Would that even matter 
if he did locate his Kazuko?  I shrugged mentally.  At least with 
the sexaroids you could tell, mostly.  They were something like 
85% or 90% organic; at the time their production had been 
outlawed, there had even been internal discussion about a third-
generation 33S design that would be almost indistinguishable from 
a human... right down to the reproductive organs and glands. If 
*they* didn't have those kinds of feelings, I'd eat my helmet.

"*Can* I free her?" he'd asked then, and I had to be honest
with him.

"I'm not sure.  I don't think so."  I handed him a pair of
slacks. "I didn't consider the pseudo-skin when planning on
infection vectors.  You might have to resort to some kind of
fluid exchange, like licking or kissing the target."  I stopped
and studied him.  "Do you generate saliva in that thing?"

"Yeah."  As he zipped up his slacks, he leaned forward and opened 
his mouth for my inspection.  It was suitably and believably wet. 
And managed a fair simulation of halitosis, too.  I wondered if 
*that* was intentional or accidental.  Closing it again, he 
continued, "I've got a small reservoir of water that I use for 
moistening my mouth.  It gets recycled unless I actually have to 
eat something, and even then I can extract more from a beverage."

"So it's actually going through your boomer body at some point,
and not just the pseudo-skin of your mouth and throat?" I asked.

"Yup," he replied.  "Shirt, please."  I handed him a dress shirt.

"Then that should do," I said.  "It should pick up Leo-A spores
right from the start."  I thought for a moment and then added,
"Nice design.  I wonder if that was Stingray or GENOM."

Kilroy shrugged.  "I don't know and I don't care.  I just wish
they'd given me a sense of taste to go with it, you know?  I once
nearly blew an undercover job by chowing down on a dish full of
hot peppers and not reacting."

I winced.  "Ouch."

He finished buttoning the shirt and gave me a wry look.  "Yeah,
tell me about it.  Hey, can you come up with some way...?"

I shook my head.  "That's beyond me; I don't do biologics, and
really, that's the only route to go for a real sense of taste and
smell.  There's just no good electronic substitute that I know
of.  Sorry."

"Oh, well."  He began tying a tie around his neck with practiced 
dexterity.  "So, I gotta kiss or spit on someone to infect'em?  I 
can't just breath on them?"

I shook my head again.  "The spores are too heavy and adhere to
each other; they'll settle out of the air way too quickly."

"Damn."  A quick tug and the four-in-hand knot was perfect.  "Oh,
well, I guess I can just lick my finger and get'em that way."

Nodding, I handed him his shoes.  He sat down and started pulling
them on.  "That'd work, too."

"Good."  He stood.  "How do I look?"

I gave him a once-over.  "Put on a jacket with leather patches on
the elbows and stick a pipe in your mouth, and no one would ever
think you were anything but a college professor."

Kilroy grinned.  "Good.  Just the look I wanted.  Good to know I
haven't lost the touch."

And with that we pulled on our coats and headed for the street.

Like I said, we made it through the security checkpoint without 
any problems (they were far more interested in people entering 
than exiting), through the ALON doors and out to the little plaza 
that separated the entrance from the bus stop.  "You got all your 
papers and whatnot?" I asked as a bus roared up, its hybrid 
powerplant emitting only a wisp of strong-smelling petrosmoke. 
We were still high on the Tower, a few stories above the tallest 
of the nearby buildings, and it was a clear night -- the view 
past the spiral road and the bus stop was spectacular, even with 
the local light pollution.

He nodded once, briskly.  "I'm cool, don't worry.  I'll drop you
an email and let you know when I find somewhere to hang my hat."

"Good."  I stuck out my hand.  "Good luck, man.  Here's hoping
you find your place in this sentient's world."

"Thanks," he said, taking my hand in his and shaking it.  "For
everything, I mean."

I just smiled.  "'S'all part of the service.  Take care of
yourself," I said, then added with a nod in the appropriate
direction, "and don't miss your ride."

"Right."  He dropped my hand and dashed for the bus.  Over his
shoulder he called, "Don't worry, you'll see me around."

After the bus had closed its doors and growled its way off to its
next stop, I said, "I'm sure I will."

                              * * *

Yokohama.  Friday, February 20, 2037, 10:55 AM

Sylia locked her helmet into place.  "All right, ladies.  Our 
target left for a leisurely late arrival at the office one half 
hour ago.  Nene?"

The pink Saber looked up.  "Security's down, as promised.  I've
also gone in and put in my own overrides, just in case it's a
trap."

"Very good," Sylia replied.  "Then it's time for a final review 
of our mission objectives before we deploy."

A crisp set of acknowledgements over the encrypted link answered 
her, and she nodded.  "Right.  Primary goal is to locate and 
retrieve a sexaroid owned by GENOM Vice President Duncan Ezequiel 
Sheng.  Upon acquisition of the sexaroid, which must be 
undamaged, we are supposed to return it for delivery to our 
customer."

"Now you're sure he's not going to just use her himself, Sylia?"
Priss softly growled.

Sylia nodded curtly, the movement amplified by the size of her 
helm.  "My contacts confirmed this morning that her existence 
will be used to embarrass and disgrace Sheng, and then she will 
be deactivated and destroyed."

"Destroyed?"  Priss fixed what Sylia was sure were angry eyes on 
the white Saber.  "I can't go along with that, Sylia.  You know 
that."

Inside her helmet, Sylia quirked a lip into an expression that 
might have been the distant ancestor of a smirk.  "That is what 
we are *supposed* to do, Priss.  But who knows what will happen 
in the midst of a mission?"

There was a moment's pause.  Then, Linna's voice:  "You'd do 
that, Sylia?  Take a loss on a commission to rescue a sexaroid?"

"We've taken that kind of loss before," Sylia replied neutrally.

"The whole point of this job is to discredit Sheng, though," Nene 
said quietly.  "How is that going to happen if we walk off with 
his sexaroid?"

"We'll just have to document his ownership very thoroughly, and
provide that in lieu of the sexaroid."  Sylia's tone made it
clear that she'd already planned for this.

"If he's pervy enough," Priss added, "he might have vids of 
himself with her.  We could send those along, too."

"That is a distinct possibility," Sylia admitted.  "We should 
take extra care to inspect his media collection.  Are there any
other ideas or suggestions?"

The Sabers glanced among themselves as three "No"s answered her.

"Very well," Sylia continued.  "We still don't have much of a 
description for her -- blonde and petite is all we received, but 
she'll be the only woman in the condo; it shouldn't be hard to 
find her.  Potential complications are few.  Nene has confirmed 
that our employer has arranged for reduced security around 
Sheng's condominium today.  One reason to be careful:  Sheng's 
eight-year-old niece Jennifer lives with him.  The girl is home-
schooled due to some illness; if we encounter her, we should take 
all steps necessary to minimize any trauma she might suffer."  She 
looked at the blank faceplates of the other women's helmets. 
"That's it. Any last questions?"

Again, three "No"s answered her, and inside her helm, Sylia smiled.

"Then, Knight Sabers, sanjo!"

                              * * *

MegaTokyo.  Friday, February 20, 2037, 11:05 AM

"Tacteam G5 to base, update."  In the silence of her apartment 
the crackling transmission seemed much louder than it actually 
was.

Katherine Madigan forced herself to relax, then thumbed the
transmit key.  "Go ahead, G5."

"We have a confirmed sighting of the Knight Sabers entering
Sheng's condo.  Repeat:  the Sabers are confirmed in Yokohama."

She smiled.  "Thank you, G5.  Continue surveillance and report
when they complete their mission."

"Acknowledged.  G5 out."

Kate twisted a knob through three clicking stops, then thumbed
the transmit key again.  "G1, this is base."

"G1 here."

"Let the rabbits run," she said smoothly.  "Repeat, let the
rabbits run."

"Acknowledged.  Rabbits will run."

"Very good.  Base out."

"Roger that, base.  G1 out."

Kate laid down the handset and burrowed deeper into her couch.
*Just a of couple hours,* she thought.  "Even less.  I'll have
Sangnoir, and I'll be able to purge Sheng.*  She felt a glow of
accomplishment begin to grow in her chest.  Sheng had not only
been a thorn in her side for years, she had found him and his
habits personally offensive.  To finally be able to do something
about him made her feel good in a way she hadn't felt often
enough recently.

She'd know soon enough about that end of the operation.  If the 
Sabers took more than fifteen minutes to retrieve Sheng's little 
toy, she'd be surprised and disappointed.  The only question that 
remained was what the Sabers would do with her.  Should they 
follow the letter of the assignment, the sexaroid would end up in 
her metaphorical hands.  It would be a shame that the boomer 
would then have to be destroyed once Sheng had been disgraced and 
cast out of GENOM, but no BU-33SP could be permitted their 
continued existence.  Privately, though, Kate hoped they would 
rescue the sexaroid; the Sabers' efforts to hide her from GENOM 
would no doubt be as effective at cloaking her existence as mere 
destruction would have been -- and would cost her less.

She could only hope the other half of the operation would go as 
well as the Sabers' side.  But her men had finally achieved 
sufficient familiarity with their assigned weapons, and the 
boomers were all combat-tested veterans of the Polar War with 
detailed and explicit orders that should cover all eventualities.

A frown crossed Kate's face.  Several of the boomers had come to 
her with full electronic warfare suites.  Chairman Quincy had 
made it clear that Sangnoir's helmet was somehow key to many of 
his strange abilities, and it was obviously an electronic device 
from all reports.  She had debated the merits of allowing the 
boomers so equipped to attack the helmet with their EW suites. 
If it were indeed the source of his powers, destroying or 
disabling it would make capturing him immeasurably easier.

Then again -- and this was the consideration that won out in the
end -- Chairman Quincy no doubt wanted the technology behind
those powers as much as he wanted the man himself.  Even though 
he had not issued any specific orders in that regard, it was 
better to be safe than sorry; she did not want to present an 
intact Sangnoir and a burnt-out shell of a helmet, only to 
discover that her priorities did not exactly match those of the 
Chairman.  No, she did not want that at all.  Better to have 
both intact.

That made her job harder, but no harder than it had been when she
first started planning.  And she was certain that she had
covered all the bases this time.  The only hard part left was
now -- the waiting.

                              * * *

Friday, February 20, 2037, 11:11 AM

The daemon caught the alert as soon as it showed up on the ADP
feeds, and threw it up on every screen in the workshop.

Another boomer attack.

I grinned to myself.

Yeah, I know I said that I wouldn't go back out in the streets.

But that was before I'd solved The Problem.

I grabbed a handful of Leo-A capsules and ran for the door.

It was time for my first field test.

                              * * *

Friday, February 20, 2037, 11:15 AM

For the last week, Lisa had tried to tell herself that it was the 
purest coincidence that she had been finding herself drifting in 
the vicinity of GENOM Tower during the middle of the day.  But 
she knew she had been lying.  The temptation to call on Doug, to 
spend what little time he might have left in this world together, 
was almost overpowering.  Just as strong, though, was the 
realization that she could easily shatter his fragile cover, 
revealing him again to the new, still-unknown hostile forces 
pursuing him -- forces which, like Kate, might be aware that they 
had known each other.

Lisa squirmed nervously, almost falling off the stool on which 
she was perched.  She caught herself on the edge of the narrow 
counter that separated her from the broad plate glass window of 
the coffeeshop in which she sat, righting herself by main force. 
After making certain that she was not about to wiggle herself off 
the seat again, she let out a long, heartfelt sigh, then picked 
up the paper cup of tea before her.  Outside, people walked to 
and fro along the sidewalk, mere centimeters away, without 
looking at her.  She sighed again.  She wouldn't have been 
feeling like this if Sylia had only let her come along on the job 
today, even to document it solely for the Sabers' internal 
archives.  But Sylia had chosen instead to minimize "non-
essential personnel" during the operation.  *Feh.*

An AD Police troop transport sped by on the street beyond the
sidewalk, its lights flashing and siren wailing.  Before Lisa
could do more than blink, another one roared past, followed by a
FireBee basetruck.  Pedestrian traffic in the direction opposite
that in which they had gone suddenly doubled, then tripled.

Her growing melancholy suddenly forgotten, Lisa tossed back the
rest of her tea, grabbed her camera, and dashed out of the shop
to fight her way upstream.

                              * * *

Yokohama.  Friday, February 20, 2037, 11:20 AM

"Have you found anything, Priss?"  Sylia's query crackled across
the private link, but Nene only paid it the faintest heed as she
progressed slowly down the stairs to the basement of Sheng's
condo.  Her hypersensors deployed, she was carefully scanning for
any signs of a boomer, although she knew that it was all but
useless when the boomer was a sexaroid.  

"Nah, Sylia, if he's really got a sexaroid, he doesn't keep her
near his master bedroom."  Priss paused.  "Ain't that kind of
strange?  I mean, unless this guy is a real freak, where else
is he going to fuck her most of the time?"

"I don't know," Linna commented from where she scouted out the
top floor.  "Sheng could be into S&M, and could be keeping her in
a dungeon in the basement full-time."

"Oh, ew," Nene blurted at the unsavory images this called up in 
her mind's eye.  "Of course I'm the one down here.  I think I'm 
going to be sick."

Humor tinged Sylia's voice.  "So what have you discovered, Nene?"

"Not much," the pink Saber reported as she reached the bottom of
the stairs and looked around.  "It's a finished basement, kinda.
Short hall, with a few doors.  Bare drywall, mudded up and
sanded, but no paint. Like he stopped in the middle of the job."
She glanced up and down the walls of the short passage.  "Four
doors, all of them closed.  There's something hanging on the last
one on the right."

"Very well," Sylia replied.  "Keep going."

"Bet one of'em's a dungeon," Priss's voice crackled in her ear, 
mischief evident in her tone.  "Don't steal too many sex toys, 
Nene, your collection is big enough."

Nene rolled her eyes.  "Oh, very funny, Priss."  Against her best
efforts, her voice grew shrill.  "You know I don't own *anything*
ecchi like..."

"Ladies, we're *working* here," Sylia warned, although her voice
still held a faint trace of amusement.

"Oh all right," Nene growled.  "Why am I always the one to get
teased?" she added under her breath, only to hear two badly-
suppressed giggles and a slight chuckle over the link.  She 
growled again and stepped up to the first of the doors.

It was, she realized, slightly ajar.  Holding her breath, she 
slowly pushed it open.  The hallway light shone into the shadowed 
space beyond and faintly illuminated its contents, and she 
augmented it with the near-infrared vision system in her sensor 
pack.  Gas furnace and hot water heater.  She released her 
breath.  Nothing scary or perverted here.

"Sylia?"  Linna's voice was querulous.  Nene turned around and
pushed gently at the door opposite the furnace room.

"Yes, Linna?"

Nene released her held breath again.  Simple storage, filled 
partly with an assortment of cardboard boxes, none of which were 
anywhere near large enough to hold a sexaroid, even were Sheng so 
stupid as to treat one that way.

"I just realized something.  Have you seen any sign of this niece 
of his?  I mean, not, is she in the house right now, but...  I 
mean, I've finished my floor here and I haven't found anything 
that looks like an 8-year-old girl's room.  Or a caretaker's,
for that matter."

"Huh, neither have I," Priss grunted as Nene turned and stepped 
to the end of the hall and the final two doors.  "No toys around 
either, you notice?  When Sho was this kid's age, he left his 
toys all over the place."  

Nene's eyes widened as she saw what hung on the right-hand door.

"Nor I," said Sylia, her tone halfway between worry and
irritation at herself.  There was a soft clattering noise.  "No
children's films or music in his AV collection."

There came a rattle, followed by a rustling noise.  "No kid-sized 
coats or sweaters in the front closet," Priss announced.  "Or 
shoes.  You sure this girl exists?"

"Curious," Sylia murmured.  "Nene?"

Nene reached out and touched the pink ceramic plaque, decorated
with ducks and kittens and trimmed with a bit of lace.
"Jennifer" was written on it in romaji.

"Nene?" Sylia repeated.

"She's down here," Nene breathed.  "Oh my god, he's keeping her 
in the basement."  She tried the knob.  Locked.  Without a second 
thought, she applied the full strength of her hardsuit to it; the 
door splintered and broke, then swung open as she stood with the 
mangled remains of the knob still in her hand.

Beyond it was... a little girl's bedroom.  *No,* she thought. 
*This is how someone who was never a little girl *thinks* a 
little girl's bedroom ought to look.*

The room must have taken up most of the basement; it was large, 
and oddly shaped.  But despite its size, it was packed full --
not cluttered, but without a single wasted space.  The 
centerpiece was a huge full-size canopy bed of rich maple wood 
with white linens.  Its sheets and coverlet were clumped up in 
the middle as if recently abandoned by its inhabitant.  And the 
rest of the room...

The only word Nene could think of was "kawaii".  Lace and frills 
and ruffles, stuffed animals and posters and cute statuettes on a 
set of old-fashioned child's furniture, all finished in an 
antiqued white that somehow managed to feel antiseptic and 
artificial.  A Victorian-style dollhouse sat on a low table, and 
exquisitely beautiful china dolls were arranged just so on an 
assortment of child-sized chairs around it.  The whole room 
seemed more parody than practical -- saccharinely cute, laid out 
more like a movie set than a place to live; it struck even Nene 
at second glance as *too* much, *too* cute.

In sharp contrast to the crisp, clean furnishings, there was a 
heavy, unpleasant scent in the air -- old, rank sweat plus 
something acid-sharp, almost foul and yet cloying, underlaid by a 
stale, starchy smell.  Nene had no idea what it was, but she 
found it unpleasant and strangely disturbing.

For the moment she spent analyzing the odor, she had thought the 
room was unoccupied.  Then the mass of twisted linens in the 
center of the bed shifted and moved, and out of their midst a 
small blonde head emerged, followed by a tiny naked body, 
slender and immature.  Huge blue eyes perched over tear-stained 
cheeks stared out at her, eyes filled with more pain and fear and 
horror than Nene thought could be possible in one so young.

And incredibly, Nene recognized her.

"Cynthia?" she murmured disbelievingly, for the girl was 
identical to the child-boomer whom the Sabers had rescued and 
then watched die five years earlier.  A chorus of shocked and 
surprised cries erupted on the Sabers' private radio channel; she 
ignored them, dropping the crushed and twisted doorknob to the 
floor as she took a step forward.

"No, Knight Saber," the little girl said clearly in a voice that 
combined the manner of an adult with the lisp of a child's half-
formed palate.  She shook her head slowly.  "Not Cynthia. 
Jennifer.  Model BU-33SP, serial number 009A-0037."  Tears began 
to seep from her eyes, rolling across her plump cheeks to fall to 
the stained sheets on which she knelt.  "Please," she whispered, 
barely loud enough for Nene to hear her.  "Kill me."  The child 
sexaroid stared up at Nene with mournful, despair-ridden eyes. 
"Free me."

                              * * *

Friday, February 20, 2037, 11:22 AM

It was almost an anticlimax.

Almost.

The boomers -- a nice round dozen of them -- were moving in a 
pack, inflicting random destruction on a mostly-abandoned 
neighborhood.  They hadn't actually killed anyone yet, but they 
had left a trail of destruction behind them that had included 
more than a few injuries.  By the time I got there, the herd had 
already broken through one ADP roadblock, and was slowly making 
its way toward another which was being thrown together a couple 
blocks away.

I had a couple dozen capsules of Leo-A on me.  On my way over I'd 
stashed them in the sleeve pocket that normally holds my Warriors 
ID.  (The ID I'd shoved into my inside chest pocket).  If they 
didn't get jammed in there, I figured I should be able to snap my 
arm just so and make a capsule drop into my open palm.  I made a 
mental note to come up with some kind of carry/ delivery system 
specifically for them, if this worked out.

The neighborhood was mostly late-20th Century rowhouse-like
structures, crammed wall-to-wall during the worst of the Japanese
population boom 40 years before.  They'd made it through the
Kanto quake, but not without wear and tear; what had been a 
populous (if not prosperous) neighborhood a couple decades back
had fallen into partial decay.  Windows, doors, and garages
were almost uniformly boarded over or nailed shut; those that
weren't gaped openly, solid black holes in the weak light from 
the grey, thickly-clouded winter sky overhead.

The state of the neighborhood was actually to my advantage.  Not 
only weren't there many civilians around, even in the middle of 
the day, I didn't expect to run into any angry homeowners while 
trying to get a good vantage point overlooking the oncoming horde 
of boomers.  (Angry homeowners rarely care that you're authorized 
by the U.N. to climb up the walls of their houses and onto their 
roofs, and they can sometimes make the difference between a 
successful operation and an utter failure.)

Anyway, I got myself into position on top of one of the less-
decayed buildings, making sure I had a reasonably solid set of 
points off of which I could bounce my way down to the ground.  I 
crouched down to make sure I wasn't seen right away, and waited 
until most of the boomers were right below me, or just a little 
ways past.

Then I murmured to the helmet computer, "<System.  'Aquarius 
Movie.'  Play.>"

                              * * *

"What the...?" Lisa murmured as she took a rapid series of 
telephoto shots.  That this neighborhood was filled with 
abandoned (and mostly intact!) houses made it *so* easy to get up 
high enough to get her trademark elevated shots.  It also made it 
very easy to track Doug when he went into his usual "hyperactive 
ping-pong ball" mode (as she had decided to call it) in a fight.

Except he wasn't.

Instead, he stood still as the twelve boomers gathered around him
in a loose circle and... did nothing.

"Geeze, Doug," she muttered to herself.  "You could at least have
turned the speakers on so I could hear what you're using."

She snapped another picture.

                              * * *

Tacteam G1 Chief John Francis Xavier Patel, clad in the latest 
active urban camouflage gear, watched the target through his 
scope and growled into his com unit.  "Wait for it, boys.  Let 
him do his thing to the boomers first; that'll save us some clean 
up afterwards."

                              * * *

I like the movie version of "Aquarius" a lot better than the 
original Broadway recording.  For one thing, I've never found a 
copy of the cast album that didn't sound a little muddy, even 
after digital clean-up.  For another, I like the movie's brassier,
more in-your-face orchestration, which just coincidentally 
stretches the song to almost twice the length of the original.

As always, more time was a definite advantage.

I resisted the urge to tap into the node and give the song a 
little more "oomph"; it was already doing just fine.  As they 
entered its area of effect, the boomers had become pacified, 
feeling no need to commit acts of violence.  One by one they 
drifted into a ring around me, with trippy, spacey looks on their 
faces, while in the song, the vocalist finally entered the mix. 
As the last boomer moved into place, I snapped my hand and, 
obediently, a capsule fell into it.  

        "<Harmony and understanding
          Sympathy and trust abounding
          No more falsehoods or derisions
          Golden living dreams of visions
          Mystic crystal revelation
          And the mind's true liberation
          Aquarius!>"

I stepped up to the closest boomer, shouted, "<Bee-yuh 
heeyalled!>" in my best over-the-top Southern televangelist 
voice, and slammed the capsule into its forehead.

I felt the gelatin shell pop under the impact, and the boomer 
went cross-eyed trying to look at what I had done.  The song kept 
it from feeling anything other than simple curiosity at my 
assault.  Then the Leo-A soaked into its skin and its eyes 
closed.

By that time I was already on my way to the next one.  "Wake up!
Time to live!"  I bellowed as I slapped another capsule against
its armor.

                              * * *

At the ADP roadblock, Leon MacNichol leaned on a patrol car's roof 
and peered through a pair of binoculars at the bizarre scene being 
enacted half a block away.  "What is he *doing*?" he growled to 
Daley.  "And why aren't the boomers attacking him?"

                              * * *

"Hold your fire for the moment, and get every camera on him right 
now," Patel muttered into the comset.  "Ms. M is going to want to 
see what he's doing.  The moment he looks like he's done, though,
nail him!"

                              * * *

In a Place that was not a place, Three were watching.

"Much better than the Armstrong/Largo debacle."

"Well, that wasn't ours.  What did you expect?"

"Not quite the Prometheus, not yet.  But he's getting there."

"Is he the Prometheus, or is he the Serpent?"

"Boomerkind is not wholly innocent, my Sister-self.  They inherit
Original Sin from their creators."

"Still, like the Serpent, he offers the chance to choose good or
evil."

"Will You Two shut up?  We don't even *belong* in that belief
system!  Besides, You're missing the action.  Again."

                              * * *

"Good morning!  This is your wake up call!"  Smack!

It took a little while to dose them all, because I was intent on
headshots for each one, and not all of them were simply standing
still.  

"I've got a lovely fresh powerpack for you, Polly Boomer!" 
Splat!

None of them were actively opposing me, but some were, well, 
grooving to a melody only they were hearing.  Their swaying and 
stamping made it a little more difficult, but not impossible.

"Welcome to your life!"  Splurt.

It took me nearly two minutes to infect all twelve boomers, and 
backed off to the rough center of the circle, where I quickly 
inspected my handiwork.  

I had known the process was likely to be unpleasant if the boomer 
were conscious.  But I wasn't expecting the howl that burst out 
of the first boomer I'd hit.  I spun in place just in time to see 
it put its hands to its head and drop to its knees.  A moment 
later, the second followed, pitching over face-first onto the 
concrete and writhing as it screamed "oh god no oh god no oh god 
no" over and over again.

One after the other, the twelve boomers reacted to the infection 
with an agony that was so appalling and so unexpected, it froze 
me in place.  One screamed and tried unsuccessfully to claw its 
eyes out.  Another seemed to go catatonic, its limbs locking up 
as its face seized up in a silent cry of agony.  Yet another 
popped bayonet-like claws from its forearms and rammed them 
through its own head.  Most of the others simply collapsed, 
moaning or sobbing.

After a moment, I snapped out of my horror-induced paralysis and 
stepped toward the screaming boomer, cutting "Aquarius" short as 
I did so.  "<System,>" I began, and then I felt a peppering of 
light impacts across my back and chest, with an accompanying 
ratatatat fusillade of little crackling noises there and around 
my feet.  I looked down to see streamers of yellowish mist 
billowing from several dozen dart-like projectiles tipped with 
what looked like broken glass capsules.

A medicinal scent reached my nose at the same moment that I 
realized what was happening.  *Oh, shit!  Gas!*  "<System!>" I 
barked as my vision started to gray out.  "<Breath...less...>" I 
managed to croak, just before everything went black.

                              * * *

"Doug!" Lisa screamed from her rooftop perch as he collapsed in 
the middle of the street.  Panic-stricken, she leapt to her feet 
and glanced about for the fastest route to the ground.  A rattle 
of metal followed by the roar of an engine yanked her attention 
back to the street below.

A garage door had suddenly opened on one of the buildings across 
the street from her, and from it erupted a black van.  A moment 
later, it and several other buildings suddenly disgorged a 
veritable legion of black-armored, balaclava-wearing troops 
carrying a wide assortment of firearms.

With growing horror, Lisa watched as they surrounded Doug and 
with cool, practiced efficiency trussed him up and threw him into 
the van.  Only at the last moment did she think to bring her 
camera to her eye and snap photographs of the scene.

In the midst of the furious action, she didn't notice several of 
the less-stricken boomers crawling into the shadows of the 
condemned buildings below.

                              * * *

"Hey, hey, hey!" Leon bellowed as he launched himself over the 
half-built ADP barricade.  "AD Police!  Drop your weapons and put 
that man down!"

The only response was a hail of bullets from several of the 
closer troopers.  Leon dropped to the ground and flattened 
h