Tonight the city is crying. Acid-tinged rain, salty tears, and more than a touch of blood. Hap and Nat and Flannery and me. "We're out, Father," mumbles Hap, adrenaline draining from his lungs. Flannery is silent. He nods, but only after a prominent delay. He has many things on his mind. Flannery is the man in white, an angel who clipped his own wings out of humility. He is the ultimate philanthropist, spreading not only the staples of the physical body, but those of the soul, too. Bread and Bibles and quiet smiles of confidence. Sheer, unflagging confidence. Confidence in a better world, the dream that MegaPrime should have been. Should have. If he were merely a man, he would be dead now, dead of shock and pain and the slow/sudden evisceration that any dreamer must surely feel when the soft down of their gentle dreams are ripped asunder and dumped in the mud for everyone to see as just that-- dreams, and not even ones that had a ghost of a chance. Myself . . . I don't make a habit of being idealistic. But Flannery is not dead. He is merely quiet, meditating on today's turn of events. Oh, he feels grief . . . something joyful died in him with that first lawpistol round, when words of peace turned to something else. He feels grief enough, and sometime, somewhere else, when he doesn't have three young, tired soldiers to lead, he will rest his head down and cry long and loud. Well, that's what I would do. But I'm human. And unlike the rest of us, Flannery isn't. So then, you're thinking, he's an android? An intel, right? No. Flannery is simply the man in white. "Humans and androids, androids and humans. "Differences, yes. While my bones will one day be dust, an android's will still carry his frame as surely as the day they were smelted. "But we are all men. "We are all equal before God." He began quietly, his voice subtly magnified by two kilowatts of rack- mounted juice and beamed into the thirsty ears of five thousand assorted church people, SELF jockeys, salarymen, and idle bystanders. Thirsty, because bitter words of hate and extermination parch the mind and wet the eyes. Senator Yuan can only damn robots so much before people tire of his fiery breath--before they tire and realize that banning the droids hasn't done anything for the city. Five thousand people leaned closer. The parched soil begged for rain. "Oh, you ask, but how can a robot, a machination, a construct, stand beside me on Judgment Day? How can an electronic toy, something that comes in a box, stand beside me? "I ask you, brothers and sisters, are we not all machines, machines of carbon and calcium and water? Are we not just mobile sacks of sea water, controlled by hormones and vitamins--chemicals? "Yet God lives within each of us. "He lives within anyone who looks down and sees a sword, a spade, a keyboard, a rifle in his hands, and asks themselves, 'Am I doing the right thing?' When someone can ask that question, can make this very fundamental decision between right and wrong, that is when he becomes a man, when he opens the door to God and earns a place at Judgment Day. "Machines--perhaps. But androids and intels have arrived at that crossroads, that critical leap where machines are transformed, are no longer preprogrammed by biology or technology to serve base functions, but instead, serve a greater purpose. "And thus God lives within each of us." Flannery's voice boomed from the six 'eighteen-inch' speaker enclosures arrayed around the base of his podium. I moved those motherfuckers, and I had the hernia to prove it. Wolf and I went down to the Church of the Open Door at ten in the morning; it took us six hours to get everything loaded in the trucks. Unloading was a substantially easier process, considering how we actually had some help in the form of the muscle that passes as Flannery's bodyguard corps. Give 'em hell, Flannery! He leaned closer to the microphones. "Who of us can say that no, God cannot live within men of steel and silicon? Who of us has the right to step up to the Almighty and say 'But you cannot have reign over these men.' Who can remorselessly hunt down his fellow men and slay them simply for being what they are--machines? Who is so blind as to only see the facade of circuitry and not the soul? "Who will deny God his Kingdom?" Flannery asked this question. Silent was the growing crowd, but loud was the answer, enunciated in five thousand muttering mouths--Yuan. The man in white counted off five seconds. "I say enough of this hate. I say we have lost so much of this planet to the four horsemen of the apocalypse that we simply do not have the time to waste. Judgment Day is nearly upon us. And as friends or foes, we will all be weighed by Him. As friends or foes . . . "I say let us stand together. "Let us work together, hand in hand, so that when that fateful day encompasses us, we may raise our heads in unison and answer Him in a single voice, 'Aye, we served you as best as we could.' "Let this union begin here." The speech was good, and everybody knew it was good, and it almost made me forget what had passed earlier in the day. Everybody, and I mean everyone from the greenest-clad religion-crazy Jesus Freaks they'd carted in from the Projects to the most conservatively-dressed salarymen were standing and applauding. Flannery was right. Too many speeches commemorating bigger and better Megapol operations ominously hinting at the downfall of the MegaPrime drug trade had taken their toll. Flannery was right, the soil was parched. Enough of threats. Hap and Nat and Flannery and me. Hap slowly pilots La Paloma down Johnson. Nat is balled up in the seat next to him, her lawpistols strewn on the floor. Fifteen minutes ago, she put four slugs of armor-piercing depleted uranium through a Popo SWAT man. He didn't stay down, and at point blank range, she blew his jaw clean off, teeth flying like shrapnel and the back of his head exploding like some overripe greenhouse melon, bloody trails of blood and brains and bone shards everywhere. I heaved up my lunch. She didn't bat an eye. Now the poor thing's red-eyed and nearly comatose, the inside of her skull bruised black from her own mental beating. Hap glances over at Nat's back for the hundredth time. Soaked with sweat and touched with dust and blood, she sobs quietly in her trademark white cotton tee shirt. The driver visibly swallows and then extends an arm over Nat. She instinctively tenses up, and Hap quickly withdraws it. But Nat, bleary-eyed and in smearing makeup, turns to the big driver and greets his embrace. And then she resumes crying. "He was a good guy," mumbles Hap. The rain keeps washing down La Paloma's windscreen. Flannery was the keynote speaker, which probably wasn't a good idea. The man in white can talk--even the most talented Senator, with a slew of speechwriters feeding real-time edits and catchphrases into his head couldn't compete. Some things come naturally--no, not charisma or looks. Shit like that can be spliced into your genes down at the Sanctuary Clinic baby farms. Sheer force--the utter, unshakable beliefs that the man in white must hold--that's what can't be grown in a vat. Speaker Number Two was going to have a tough, tough time of it. Wolf stood with him. Grinning and smiling before Flannery's speech, all blond-hair, blue-eyed good looks, his sheer elatement at being back in the swing of things SELF-wise was the complete foil to my somewhat suicidal urges of that moment. "What happened?" the empath asked, lighting an illegal cigarette. "Got dumped," I muttered. Then the man in white started up--"Humans and androids. Androids and humans." If all that shit hadn't come down afterwards . . . well, the Sensovision comedy skit shows would've mocked that intro to the end of time--or at least until their sample audiences gave it the thumbs-down. "I would like to introduce you to a hero of the South Projects. Personally responsible for saving at least a dozen people trapped inside Seoul Block, I met this man less than a week ago in the rubble of the Projects. Working alongside him in the long recovery process, I became acquainted with him and now, I am proud to call him a good friend." The second speaker. Flannery turned to his side. A tall, bald man in an austere black suit standing to Flannery's left strode up beside him. He awkwardly embraced the man in white with one arm. "I present Simon Bolivar." Red-eyed motherfucker had balls. For any android, much less the leader of SELF, to make a public appearance was something akin to lighting a circle of emergency flares and waving to Popo patrols, "SHOOT ME! I DON'T WANT TO LIVE!" Upon further recollection, I have no idea how--or even if-- Bolivar planned to survive for the duration of his speech. "People of MegaPrime!" he rumbled, his voice mirroring that of someone historical . . . I couldn't place it at the time, but now it seems sadly appropriate, though a bit pretentious. "People of MegaPrime," he repeated, "I speak for all of the Sentient Engine Liberation Front when I say that I am genuinely honored by such a massive showing of support." Clustered near the opposite wall of the Concourse, the SELF people let out a loud roar. Bolivar smiled again and saluted them. "I come here today in person," a couple people, including Wolf, snickered at the phrase, "to ask a simple question of the Senators." Martin Luther King, Jr.--that was the voice. "The Senators claim that you, the people of MegaPrime, are afraid that we 'androids' will take your livelihoods. As proven by circumstance--the South Projects tragedy--there are some tasks that artificial intelligences are simply better at." Bolivar rolled back the left sleeve of his sportcoat. Beneath it, his arm was a tangled mess of wires, servos, and ruined cydonium 'bones'. He held it aloft like some sick trophy, letting the whole five thousand soak up the sight of it. "I walked through three hundred degree flames in Seoul Block. I had to rip open a six centimeter blast door with my fingers. I blocked a falling structural support with my arm." He glanced down momentarily, a purely theatrical gesture. "I physically pulled twelve people out of that inferno. "And I'd do it again." He waited for the applause to die down. I glanced across the stage area to Wolf. He flashed me a smile and pulled on his cigarette. A hazy blue cloud of the carcinogenic shit drifted off of him. "So today, I ask the honorable Senators . . . would they do the same? Give us that answer, and then let's hear them say, with a straight face, that the only good android is a-" The targeting beam was a flickering soft red hair, caught momentarily in the smoke off of Wolf's cancer stick. I blinked, surprised. Bolivar reeled backwards. Hap, Nat, Flannery and me. La Paloma doesn't have windshield wipers. They are useless affectations that only increase an air vehicle's drag. The rain is simply crashing down, nature's spigot on full open. The groundcar's headlights are blurry yellow-white beams into the deluge. It doesn't rain very often in MegaPrime. Something about the fucked-up nature of the jet stream, it being pushed south by excessive arctic air or pushed north by excessive tropical heat. I must have learned that back at Father Borgeouis Secondary School. I must have forgotten it someplace between there and here. It doesn't rain much in MegaPrime, but it is raining tonight, and in a strange way, I am glad. I caught the distinctive click of a distinctive boot heel touching down on the polished tile flooring behind me. Idly, I turned toward the sound, spotting the pointed tip of a that distinctive black synth-leather boot. My eyes drifted upwards, noting a long tweed briefcase, a tan overcoat tied tight around a certain, ever distinctive waist. What the eyes don't recall the arms often do . . . my subconscious remembered that certain dimension in the pregnant moment before I glimpsed that damn wiry brown hair . . . My eyes went wide. "Casey!" I yelled, staggering to my feet. She tipped her head to her side and walked faster, turning at an intersection of hallways. I raced after her, forgetting about Wolf and his malfunctioning PA. Dashing around the corner, I reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Excuse me!" she barked, twisting out of my grasp and turning to face me. She was as before--her face thin, sharply defined, sweetly predatory. Her hair was drawn back beneath a carbon-black beret edged with light blue. Pointed chin, pointed nose, they lined me up in the sights of her green eyes. They appeared almost yellow in the sickly lighting of that back corridor. "Do you have a problem?" I stepped closer. "Hi." "I'm sorry, do I know you?" The words were spit at me, and I felt something inside me burning--shorting out. This wasn't how she should have answered. "Karl Williams?" I feebly replied. Her eyes narrowed and I smelled plastic and wiring roasting-- but it wasn't any android's skin aflame . . . She walked away. "What?" I shouted after her. "What?" "Stay the fuck away from me," she growled back, marching down the maintenance alley. My mouth fell open, my mind groping for something, anything to say. "I love you, Casey!" She didn't hear me. Breaking, snapping, electricity coursing . . . Something evil welled up in me. "I got HIV one twelve B from you!" The words blindsided her, a physical blow to the back of her head. She broke her stride and reached out for a fiber optic relay box. Leaning against it, Grocke looked over her shoulder at me. "What?" she cried, suddenly looking older, tired. I physically slapped myself and stepped towards her. "No--I do love you! I didn't mean-" "WHAT?" The word was torn from her lungs, little flecks of spittle, phlegm, blood trailing the agonizing word. Paralyzed. "IS IT FUCKING TRUE?" I mouthed the word 'yes'. A livid wave of rage and fear swept her face--and then something cold and dead took its place and I knew that Grocke was gone. Dead already, and not from any bioengineered virus. "Go home, Karl. You don't want to be here." "No! I want to be with you!" Her right hand rose to rest underneath her right breast. "Go home, Karl." Her voice was a cold knife at the back of my nape. Her fingers slid for the crease of her overcoat. I recognized the gesture. The writhing, smoldering thing inside my chest snapped. I didn't run. She was going for her gun. I closed my eyes and dropped to my knees. I should have jumped back behind the corner, pulled out my plasma . . . did something. But, you know, I wasn't really in the mood. Very empty, that's how I felt--how I'm feeling--a certain someone gutted me without even breaking my skin. I waited for the shot. I waited a long time. I heard her boots--click-click-click--I heard her back away, slowly at first, and then faster. I heard her turn and run. Run. That's what we do now. We three run from the beating of our lives. Beaten. To within an inch--an old Imperial inch--of our already dead, dead lives. I caught the thunder of the blast, the clapping together of air split by ionized particles, an artificial lightning bolt. Someone shot Bolivar with a laser rifle. Red eyes round with shock, the big android instinctively clawed at the podium; the entire right side of his chest was a sizzling, bubbling sore, a huge red-and-black stew of latex synth-flesh and welted cydonium. Silence overtook the entirety of the Great Concourse. Sensovision gets it right--time did slow to a crawl. A la Gravball, the broad-shouldered Sirius bodyguards, heavy green coats flapping open, brutally--lovingly--shoved Flannery down. Bolivar, flailing, collapsed in the nick of time; a second shot pierced the spot where his head had been. It caught a Sirius guard low in the abdomen. Light ballistic body armor proved useless; the man sprayed blood, blood flying, bodyguards diving, Wolf tossing his smoke and leaping over falling men, scrambling for Bolivar; a third shot ripping into the speakers . . . And then Nat was in the air. Her lawpistols were in her hands like she'd been born with them; they slid from her hakama pants as if greased. Vaulting behind the podium, she threw her right arm over the top of the heavy thermoplastic box. Nat fired. Time, already achingly slow, ground to a stop. The eviscerated bodyguard crumpled to the stage floor like a marionette with his strings cut--his blood still lingered in the hazy smoke and ozone-choked air. Wolf's dropped cigarette and the shell from Nat's lawpistol perched at their respective apogees, blue vapor trailing both. And a single depleted uranium round climbed up a red shaft of light; defiance! Jack Rawlings flying up the Cydonia elevator to fight the bug brain one-on-one; pulling, hoisting itself up a needle-fine strand of ruby red, return to sender, host unknown, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars . . . Bang. The bullet hit thermoplastic three levels up on the opposite side of the Great Concourse, missing a certain, distinctive slit of open window by mere centimeters. I watched with lazy eyes as spiderwebs splashed outwards, thousands of tiny prisms flickering outwards, concentric circles of shards flaking off. I wanted to cry; the sight was so profoundly beautiful. Shortly after that transcending moment all fuck broke loose. The emergency exits on the far side of the Concourse snapped open and a hundred jack-in-the-box Popo SWAT motherfuckers flew out. The sniper and Nat got down to the gruelling task of trading shots at random, the crack-crack-crack of lawpistol rounds accompanying the THOOMTHOOM of high-energy laser beams. Free-form drumming meets bass-from-hell. I dunno. I was too busy diving behind the power amplifiers. A scoutcar roared in from the rodeo. "PLACE YOUR HANDS ON THE FLOOR. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST," blared the cowboy, the antigrav engines on his hovercar whining loudly. "PLACE YOUR HANDS ON THE FLOOR. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES CONTROL ACT. PLACE YOUR-" The Popo car shuddered. Someone bounced a magnetic disk off its thermoplastic canopy. The Popo Riot Squad, all dressed up for the Junior Prom in their best black and blue helmets, shields, and body armor, waded into the crowd. They brandished their stun batons--bad decision. There wasn't nary a tick before everybody, and I mean everybody, from the church virgins to the greasy, half-drunk salarymen pulled a weapon. Chains, belts, pipes, handguns, Edgars, Flight shotguns . . . Flannery's peaceable meeting became a mad brawl in about three seconds flat. With the Popo filling up all the exits, there wasn't anywhere for the five thousand or so onlookers to run. A few, a very few, I think, actually put their hands on the floor and covered their asses. The rest didn't, and the Popo promptly began lobbing tear gas canisters. They have stun gas, which works a lot faster and isn't nearly as toxic, but they didn't use it. They never use the stun gas at riots; the fuckers are sadists. "To La Paloma!" yelled Hap, jarring me out of the sweet delirium of externalized violence I was sinking into. The Sirius crew dragged Flannery toward the exit behind the stage. A guard went down from a unlucky laser shot; his buddies grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him along. Wolf crouched over Bolivar, ineffectively trying to help him up. "Go!" yelled the android. He glanced over his shoulder. He was right; Nat and Wolf and I should have been going. The Popo were coming. Slashing through the dispersing crowd with stun batons arcing voltage and hurt, a squad of the Riot boys sprint for the podium. Nat leaned around its side and picked off the point man. Hap was at the back exit, an autocannon suddenly in his arms. There was hurt in his face, the furious, impotent pain that comes with conflicting duties . . . "Move it!" he shouted, voice--face--distorting. The Popo coming for us spotted him. Just another big green motherfucker waiting for a bullet between his eyes. Edgar lead glanced off the doorframe. He replied with a long, rolling burst that ripped apart the Popo crew, one oversize slug ripping a man's arm out of its socket. Megapol was waking up to the fact that this wasn't any normal bust. Through the clouds of noxious gasses and arcing electricity, I could see that the SELF heavies, disguised as suits, were really mixing it up. There were a lot of dead people down there . . . a Popo officer mowed down a dozen fleeing Sirius members with his Edgar. His squad frantically fell back, shotgun pellets eating a Riot man's spleen. The officer's weapon jammed; a not-quite-dead cyborg pulled itself from the gore and planted a wicked-looking revolver at the base of the cop's neck. The officer's head exploded. A moment too late, the half-human was ripped to shreds by a horizontal hail of autocannon fire. Dissonant moans and screams filled the sudden silence. "Wolf! Peace! Nat!" yelled Hap. He had been shouting at the top of his lungs. A Wolfhound armored personnel carrier suddenly careened down the center isle of the Concourse, clipping a running man. Flung down, a cop walked over to his twitching body. I watched, fascinated, as heavily armored Popo piled out of the black and blue truck. One noticed the man; he strode over and planted his autocannon on his head. "Come on!" Hap bellowed, desperate. Nat stands with him, blasting away at the armored troops. The Popo shot the man. He spasmed momentarily, and then went limp. I lurched from my cover and ran for the exit. A round ricochetted from the frame above my head. "I'll get the car," said Hap. The cydonium-wearing brutes turned our direction. "Mike!" shouted Nat. I glanced back from the safety of the doorway. Wolf, his clothes smeared and burnt by fried circuitry and servos, was struggling to repair or salvage the big android. By the looks of it, he was trying to manually pull out Bolivar's data storage module. "MIKE!" cried Nat, the lumbering soldiers almost upon him. Wolf looked up, a sad, sad smile on his lips. He shrugged and went back to working on Bolivar. The two lead Popo grabbed him. A stun baton came down hard on Wolf's head. I peered across the doorway at Nat. Her small frame was contorted, twisted, her dark eyes calculating her odds . . . "That's Megapol heavy armor," I bluntly state. She glares at me, hate and tears welling up in her eyes. A burst of lead flew through the doorway, and it was time to run. Nat took it personally. The direct route to the parking garages was already flooded with Megapol and Senate security goons. Nat took it personally. The direct route was the fastest route. She took it personally, and she made every last Popo SWAT trooper feel it. She would sprint ahead, I would hear the flurry of a one-sided firefight, and then I would round the corner to face the steaming corpses of two or three Popo. After the first few bodies, I didn't have any more lunch to cough up. The areas around the garages were just free-fire zones. A door burst open ahead of us, and Nat nailed the man who stepped out. "Shit, you just killed a janitor!" I yelled, my voice whiny and cracking. She kicked over his body, revealing a Marsec Flight Shotgun tangled in his dead hands. Just outside of our parking area, a Popo commando got the jump on us. Hopped out of an abandoned security station between myself and Nat--he nearly bagged me, but Nat smoked him with one bullet. His buddy with the autocannon was at the end of the corridor. My plasma pistol was out from under my tee shirt before he put a boot down. It barked four times and planted four minidisk-sized holes in the man's riot gear before even I knew what was going on. The surprised bastard hit the cement head first. Ears ringing, I stood from my crouch. "Fuck," I remember muttering. Nat brushed herself off, loping up the corridor. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?" she asked offhandedly. "I don't know," I replied, stepping over the corpses. And now we turn left on Lennon Street. The Church of the Open Door awaits us. Hap will pull up into the garages there, and Flannery will thank him for the ride. His surviving bodyguards will hustle him inside, and we three will be left to drive back to the Free Territories. Nat will cry the whole way; Hap will try to comfort her. I will sit in the middle of the back seat. I will watch the rain pour down, soaking the earth, washing the built-up stinks and odors of a thousand rainless days away; replacing it with another smell entirely. I will watch the storm from my apartment. How long the storm will last, I do not know. I will watch with red eyes and wait it out. Tonight the city is crying. 5/1/98
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