They dropped him off at his apartment building. He went inside, and locked his door. It had to have been a dream, yet he knew it was no delusion, no fantasy. It had been quite real. For six months he had been a prisoner. Of the time before that he had no memories whatsoever. His first memory was of waking on a bed in a hospital, and wondering who he was and how he had gotten there.
He had seen a judge, and the judge had told him he was sick, and crazy, told him that he should spend some time with some doctors who would help him, to help him to remember. They helped him to remember nothing, and he didn't remember much of that time. There had been cool hospital smells, and blue walls, and a lot of drugged hazes, but beyond that, he recalled little.
There was not much memory of this place left. The men who had brought him here had told him, as the doctor's medicines had worn off, that they had paid the rent for him at the little apartment off of Fifteenth and Massachusetts, NW. They had paid it for six months. A woman with the unmistakable air of the mid-level city bureaucrat told him that the city would continue to pay his rent, and give him a monthly allotment for food and necessities. He must report weekly to the address on a card she gave him, and receive weekly injections. He seemed to be almost alert by then, so they took him home.
He set down the groceries they had thoughtfully provided for him, set them on the sink counter next to the refrigerator. A memory intruded, of long strong woman's arms around him, of kissing against the stove. Only that and nothing more. He began to fill his 'fridge.
The apartment was spotless.
The glasses were stacked neatly within cabinets, and he took one down, and filled it with water from the tap. He crossed to the living room, and sat down on a chair that seemed to fit him familiarly. A new TV set was on the top of a stereo cabinet, and a cable snaked from the wall to the TV. It was a nice TV, high-definition, stereo, very modern, very high-tech. He turned it on.
Nothing much had changed, he thought. He didn't remember much of what had been on the news before, and this vaguely bothered him, but he let it pass. He didn't really feel like thinking much. It was so much easier to sit and let the images wash over him. After a while, he slept, right there in the chair.
He woke in his bed. He must have sleepwalked, for he did remember dreaming. He had dreamt of a woman, of a warm body beside him. Of course it had all been a dream. What else could it have been?
Outside of his window, and through tiny fiber-optic lenses, cameras watched him as he slept.
Lace made her rounds of the bars.
Ever mysterious, yet approachable, she danced, and drank, and occasionally, men took her home. Often, there were others of her people there, and she was a bit mysterious with them as well. To the Night People, she was less approachable than she was to the Men who sought her company. Often, as she spun her little seductions at one table, there would be, at the next table over, some of her breed, some obviously checking her out. Politely they deferred to her signed requests for non-interruption... and she never saw any of these youthful-seeming yet oddly reserved and polite individuals at the vampyr bars.
Perhaps they knew of her, to some extent. She had no way of knowing, but she was sure that at least some of them had spoken with others, concerning the new girl in town. Vampyrs were, it seemed, rather a chatty bunch among themselves, and were unlikely to allow the debutant to arrive unremarked. She didn't know what K'at had told the others about her, but they had since been rather diffident about her presence at The Morgue and other vampyr bars.
She had noticed that these silent companions at other tables were, in many ways, rather more like her than were the young ones in the bat-bars. They, like she, were more developed. She had, in her ongoing search to better understand herself, encountered the concept of neoteny, a retention in the adult animal of juvenile or infantile characteristics. She recalled that she had been several years into a rather delayed adolescence before she had ever developed the Hunger, and had been much more like the Morgue crew at the time the Hunger developed. Her maturational processes hadn't ceased yet; she'd had to switch to a larger size in clothes. She weighed a few pounds more, and she took lots of vitamins, especially high-iron supplements, and while the Hunger lessened, it did not cease. Perhaps the Cure the young caged ones used must be started at a certain age, or before, and perhaps its main operational principle was to forestall full maturation. Tonight she was celebrating her twentyfirst birthday, and she was at a table in the back of the Mayflower Hotel bar.
She wondered about the scanners. That she would be unique in her knowledge of them among her new friends had not occurred to her, and she was astounded by their denials and accusations of paranoia. She didn't even try to point the scanners out to them. She felt that even if she were able somehow to show them their images on a monitor somewhere they would continue to deny the existence of ubiquitous little spy-eyes. She knew though, that others did know of the existence of these devices. Certain high-rollers and businessmen obviously knew, and there were safe bars where the wealthy and the powerful could gather to discuss the business of multinational finance and corporate power.
The Mayflower was one of these. Across the room were some true heavies, interspersed with a few foreign influential types. A famous network anchor ate a ninety-dollar meal with a graying man in a gray suit, and doubtless the world would hear of it soon. They occasionally paused to sip their drinks as the staff removed old dishes and set new courses before them. In the table adjacent to her, one of her kind discussed transfers of very large sums of money as investment in various emerging technologies. She recognized none of the company names, and none of the products. It sounded as if they were some sort of genetically-engineered products, names ending in -ose, -ase, and -orphin. She finished her rare Filet Mignon (and few places in town cooked it like they did at the Mayflower) and, after wiping her lips, began to sip at her Pernod Martini. She let her gaze drift vacantly around the room, not anxious to appear to be waiting. She wanted just to look like a young lady of substantial means (which indeed she was), treating herself to a night out on her own.
The gentleman dealing with the vampyr on her left admonished the fellow, "You do of course realize that your entry into the field with this sort of capital power will cause a massive shake-up and scramble. You will have acquired controlling interest in fifteen small corporations if we are successful, and you will also have made substantial inroads towards part-ownership in eight others. I will certainly do as you ask, as my commissions will be, as you know, quite healthy. I would like to have some ideas as to your intent on these matters. Is this just a raid, or do you have serious long term interest in these technologies? Genetic engineering capabilities, especially as regards viral substitution techniques, are highly restricted, and controlled by the National Institutes of Health. There will be watchdogs, doubtless, from several of the intelligence agencies which will concern themselves with every aspect of your history, and they will leave no stone unturned as regards your possible intentions, motives, contacts, and business strategy. After the BCCI scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission will surely cooperate with any information requests from these agencies, and you had really better not so much as consider sales of these technologies and properties to certain foreign interests."
"As you are aware," the vampyr responded, "I own substantial interests in certain hospitals, insurance firms, and medical/pharmaceutical concerns, at all points of the manufacture and distribution chain.
"I was not interested, during my college years, in medicine, concentrating instead in business, for which I have a talent. I have invested wisely, and managed a moderate family inheritance into a sizable estate. Recently, however, I have become interested in the advance of certain medical technologies, and my researches, and business intuition, lead me to believe that I would receive a great return should I invest prudently in certain areas of medical venture. As far as I am concerned, my greatest overall return on investment would be realized if I were to leave the money in the arena for some time to come. I have something of a vision, you see, and while I do not care to elaborate further, I can comfortably say that my possible realization of that vision would entail a great deal of coordination and cooperation between what would ordinarily be competing firms. As the controlling stockholder of these companies, I would be in a position to promote that cooperation." The vampyr unsteepled his fingers and sipped at his wine.
"You will have to be very careful to not make certain moves which could lead to prosecution under Sherman Act provisions, as well as other Federal laws. There is a very thin gray area between what you seem to be proposing, and operating in restraint of trade. On the basis of what you have and have not told me, I can operate as you require without much concern for my own potential culpability in hypothetical Federal matters. Once you have acquired these holdings, though, my firm will not be available for legal counsel to any of your operations, although we can and will continue to make stock transactions for you." The businessman looked closely at the vampyr, and Lace wondered, why does he not see what he's looking at so intently?
The vampyr nodded, and said, "I understand fully. I shall not include your firm in any of my efforts in any manner not consistent with your stockbroking functions. You personally shall receive a great sum of money as a result of your efforts, should we be successful, but after this transaction is complete, our business together is at an end. I am quite satisfied with your cooperation in this matter. Let us now see to the matter at hand." He signaled the waiter, who presented a chit. The vampyr signed without looking at the chit, and the businessman rose. The vampyr rose as well, extending his hand to offer a firm shake. The businessman gathered his briefcase, and took his leave.
The vampyr picked up the remaining wine, swirled it, and drained it. He turned his attention to Lace, and said, "Good evening, my dear. You've been so quiet I had almost forgotten your presence here. I do not believe that we have met before. As there is no one here to introduce us, may we dispense with formality, and introduce ourselves?"
She was a bit shocked, but she had not signaled uninterruption, not being with an intended, nor another vampyr, so she extended her hand demurely, and said, "If I had to rely on proper introduction, I'd never meet anyone. I seldom travel with company, so I must introduce myself to anyone I wish to meet, unless they choose to do so first. I am pleased to meet you, I'm Lace."
"On a first name basis so soon?" He seemed a bit amused. A very dry smile worked its way across his face.
"One knows less about others on a purely first-name basis than one does when one is in possession of the full name, sir. You might not wish to know me if you knew exactly who I was." She smiled back, a little hesitant, uncertain how to play this out.
"I have you at the advantage... " He took her hand, gently, and said, "I am Joshua, and pleased to meet you as well. I do hope I have not intruded. So sorry to meet and run, but I have matters of business to which I must urgently attend. I shall hopefully see you again, when I am less pressed for time. I must go now."
"No intrusion, sir. Perhaps we'll meet again."
There were major disturbances on the stock market in the next few days. Massive amounts of money changed hands, as did much stock ownership. Lace watched with great interest, but little comprehension as vast sums flew about like swarms of flies on the Dow-Jones screen.
While living with Cala and being "educated", she had finally given in to the social momentum of the trendy yuppie set (within whose ranks she masqueraded), and had acquired some computer skills. She still retained the word-processing skills she had learned in junior highschool, expanded upon them, and had decided to go out and buy herself a real monster of a home system, which eventually evolved into a fully-loaded workstation, running Xwindows on top of Linux. She had blown a lot of money on a projection monitor. She always kept a window opened to the Dow-Jones ticker, to which she subscribed directly. Though she generally confined her use of the device to spreadsheet forecasting, retrieving market quotes, and similar business activities (she wasn't about to leave her portfolio management entirely up to the three firms she employed), she had also developed a fondness for board-hopping and web-surfing.
She had been intrigued by the (to her) novel concept of telecommuting, and remote data manipulation, and had drifted into the virtual reality of Bulletin Board Systems almost as a fluke. She had bought three internal modems with her system, and the young clerk who sold her the system and peripherals, salivating for her as well as for the fat commission that this sale would bring, had told her to call the PC Users Group board, and to download the Focke list. One Mike Focke listed every phone number in the DC local telephone exchange which was routinely answered by modem. She had called them all, and had pulled out piles and piles of shareware and freeware, eventually filling up a few CD-ROM disks with all of the stolen goodies. Once it became common, she subscribed to a few small-time Internet service providers, and eventually went whole-hog, acquiring residential integrated-services digital-network (ISDN) capability and service.
She was a regular on a lot of boards, and had grown to be almost an addict of the little world that existed only on the screens of computers. She was a demon typist, and at 2400 baud, could often type faster than the host system could receive, but try as she might, she never could crack the 480cps barrier. When she got her 128Kbaud ISDN connection, she found herself spending entire days immersed in cyberculture.
She seldom attended meets. She had gone to a few at first, just so that she could be verified as a real person, an essential precursor to decent access on the local bulletin boards. The local-board people were often true weenies and dweebs. Some wore actual pocket protectors, and there was one obviously crazed individual (wearing a tattered and obviously favorite t-shirt emblazoned with some stupid cartoon advertising animal) who actually logged on from only from pay phones with a portable. He was rumored to only rarely attend meets, and then directly link via nullmodem into the host systems for massive encrypted fileswaps. She had gone to one meet and been studiously ignored by all of the most serious folk (who were the ones she most wished to converse with), and had been treated for the first time to the unique odor of massive CD-ROM writing. One dweeb looked up at her from behind thick glasses, and tried to smooth his unruly hair. It didn't help, but she gave him her best mysterious smile, and asked what was up.
The poor guy was at a total loss as to the right way to approach a woman, especially a lovely young thing in perfect health, but he surely did indeed know his computers. He explained, in massive detail, and well-reasoned sequence, exactly what was going on. They were making copies of a CD-ROM with almost one thousand gigabytes, a terabyte directory full of applications, all of the latest, hottest, and all certified virus free. This activity was awesomely illegal, but if she would be sure to be discreet, he would run her off a copy. She gave him ample assurances, and a bit of a push, and he did what he wanted to do anyway, and they each made a new friend. Generally, she only really kept in touch with him and the others by modem, but that was all right with him and the others; most were shy enough that they preferred the surreal contact of instantaneously posted messages on a monitor screen. Most of them evidently spent about as much time out in the sun as she herself did. The software was as advertised, insofar as she had tested it. There were intrusion countermeasures both passive and active, but she only ever used the most passive of them. Still, nobody had ever tried seriously to circumvent these, and she had no idea what might happen if she were really raided. Therefor, she never kept any data of any real importance on any drives which could be accessed from outside, and maintained strict firewall protocols.
Fred's dataworm was still circulating in the general realms of cyberspace, trying to punch itself into places where it was most definitely not wanted. It was pretty hard to keep out, but since it had never been designed to think for itself, it had no way to adapt to operating-system revisions, and certainly couldn't cope with the introduction of completely new operating systems or utterly new physical system archetectures. Besides, most people had obtained a virus editor which specific portions of Fred's pocket masterwork. Certain portions were retained as a tribute to the elegance of the world's most destructive hack. It seemed that the filescanner he had incorporated was a superior tool in almost anybody's utility folder; after all it had been stolen from a Shop file designed to crack and read any file on any machine with a connection to the various National Electronic Teledata Systems (NETS). Lace had a NETS subscription, but she generally had her main system unplugged at the hardware connection port. A dummy terminal (an old 486, also running a mirror of her main Linux configuration) which she kept attached to the NETS registered occasional lightning raids. The compliant machine would yield a report of the last six months of stock quotes, and the raiders would sever the connection. Doubtless they thought her a complete idiot for her total lack of protective systems. She hoped they thought her ignorant. Her real system, hiding behind its firewalls, was pretty massively stacked with data and the results of her online searches and filterings. Better that they hit and run and grab something nice and big that had nothing in it that they couldn't find at the library, rather than dedicate themselves to cracking her workstation's less-than-foolproof security.
Despite all of her hacker-geeked super-applications, there was nothing on her big system that could help her sort out of close to a billion stock transactions just which money on the Wall Street board was going where. She had a lot of ideas on the subject, but no real information could be gleaned from the present data.
All she could see was a lot of money being made.
She sucked all of the day's quotes into one file, and passed it through the firewall. The 486 end was what she used for her data collection. It wrote to its own harddisk, scanned the datasets for viruses, or anything that would be out of the ordinary for stock quotes, and then dumped to an external harddrive which had to be physically mounted or unmounted to the workstation. Once it had all collected, she flipped the mounting switch, and ran it through the workstation's own virus scanners. While all of the data was churning, she opened some windows into a spreadsheet, and opened another window into a filter. She set the filter to load into the spreadsheet any activities, on a fifteen minute interval scheme, of any company names with "gen", "bio", "med", "pharm" strings. She added a few other medical sounding strings, edited her control panel window, and watched the spreadsheet fill up.
There was constant activity in the medical sectors. It seemed that a lot of little companies were paying a few cents more for some small blocks of selected medical stocks, and then selling those in smaller blocks to smaller companies. One of the companies though, was not getting much activity, and she wondered why. Its price was very low, so she opened a window onto the National Data Library files, and ran a global on the company, Chemitic Cultures, Inc.
Chemitic Cultures, Inc., had had a tidy little steady-state business serving (mainly) the microbrewery industry, which during the mid-nineties had taken off, eventually (taken collectively) coming to corner almost forty percent of the domestic beer market. Chemitic supplied specialized yeast cultures which added their own particular flavors to homebrew. Chemitic had made, and suffered through, a late start in pursuit of the instantly trendy homebrew craze, nearly abandoning their old certain-if-marginal line of workaday brewery supplies to add a new line of products designed to capture the latest amazingly profitable yuppie craze. The initial surge of sales of their highest-profit product, an automated yeast cultivator ("feed it and forget it!"), had not been fast enough to keep the bank from calling its money home, and the shareholders had begun to bail out. The price had dropped to the rock bottom, the company had suspended manufacturing recently, and receivership was imminent. The assets were mostly real assets, in the form of a plant with fairly modern equipment, most of which was dedicated to packaging of hermetically-sealed specialized yeast cultures and a final-assembly line for the culturing units. If she wanted to pour about a million dollars into it, she could have it. They were still making deliveries, but it was obviously a lost cause. Without outside financial support, they could never hope to meet debt schedules. They could only fight a losing battle until someone finally pulled a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on them from the outside.
The devices themselves were evidently quite a little innovation. They seemed to combine the best qualities of an automatic cat feeder, a food-processor, and a crockpot. One just added yeast, water, and sugars to a plugged in unit, and every few days, you could come by and scoop off a few inches of yeast.
An idea hit her like a bus hits a train. No! she thought... Yes!
She dropped carrier and called her stockbroker and her lawyers.
Life was routine.
All parts of his life were routine, and simple mindless ritual. He had no friends. His interpersonal relationships were restricted to his tri-weekly group therapy sessions, and most of the other outpatients were as devoid of personality as he was. He had to get out more, he just knew it, and despite the conditioned terror that overwhelmed him, he began to go places.
He shopped. The panic he experienced shopping was enough to send him home, shivering with a cold dread that the crisp fall night could not have caused. He was able to make himself go to the 7-11 nearby, despite the people on the streets, people who seemed to him to be hostile ogres lying in wait for his money, blood and life. Once, a beggar approached him, drunk and filthy with gutter slime, reeking of vomit and cheap wine. Ron threw a ten dollar bill at the man, and ran home in a panic. His shivering did not subside until he was locked within the confines of his apartment, where surely nobody could enter to harm him. There were new bars on his windows, which the kind people of the social services department had provided.
He took some of his money, though, and slowly worked his way up to shopping, at first in the Mom and Pop stores in his neighborhood, and then finally to the Safeway on 17th Street, NW. He even ate at the McDonald's across the street from the Safeway. The sounds of DC homespeak and Central American Spanish provided a strangely comforting background to his meals. His ears, which normally strained to extract content from all conversations around him, were instead soothed by meaningless lyrical phrases of languages he knew not at all.
It took months, and more months, and the seasons turned around yet again, and suddenly it was early summer of 1998, and he still reported for his injections, but only twice monthly now. He still became quite self-conscious any time he was appraised by passersby. He had been robbed twice, each time for about five dollars, and the recession-starved street people knew that he was no rich target. His clothing, which had once been rather unfashionable, but still of high quality, now exuded the unmistakable shabbiness that comes of careful conservation. He had once been a yuppie, and now was obviously fallen, like so much of America, upon bad times.
The modern rich were really rather obvious. The modern professional was readily marked by the current "power-tie", the mini-cellular phone on the belt, the shoes whose cost would feed and house the hungry indigent for a month. The elite changed their fashions three and four times a year, and the common drones were seen in the universal fashion of poverty, years-old thrift-store apparel and cheap Chinese shoes. There were zones of town which one could not really penetrate unless one wore the proper class badges. The dress codes had once excluded one only from the most high-class restaurants and hotels. Now the very streets were possessed by jealous factions, defending each their own turf from outsiders. It could be death to cross from one side of the street to another, simply for wearing the wrong colors. It was not gang war in DC, though, it was class conflict escalated to the level of cultural cannibalism. The classes interfaced less and less, and there were fewer common meeting grounds.
Even major grocery chains were subjected to this escalation of weirdness. Certain areas of town seemed to be turning into enclaves, and the sight of an unescorted stranger could be the provocation for all sorts of harassment, ranging from asaults at bus stops to surreptitious injections while waiting at the checkout line. Bizarre modifications of medical technology began to appear in the most unlikely places. Illegal Mexican immigrants (who had swarmed the country in droves after the collapse of the Mexican economy in 1995) were commonly found, when arrested, to be in possession of a packet which contained a mainline catheter and a tube of diluted superglue. There was a rash of incidents where persons complained of an unknown assailant attacking people with what was evidently an arthroscopic suture-shooter. Hapless victims wandered the street with their heads stapled sideways, waiting for the suture material to dissolve. Asian immigrants, often utterly lost within and rejected by mainstream American culture began to harass their customers, who often took their business elsewhere, to be harassed by the clerks at whatever alternative they selected. You couldn't spend your money with ease in a great many places.
There were a few places one could go unharassed, though, to spend what money, meager or boundless, one wished to part with. There was a common mode, and it was not a mode to be participated in by the aged. Thirtysomething was pushing the envelope in these venues, but sometimes one could get away with what one dared.
Ron couldn't drink, as some factor in his medication made him violently ill through its interaction with alcohol, but he could hang. With his lower doses, less frequently received, he found that he wanted to hang; and to hang one wore black.
Black was the uniform of rejection of society's class restrictions... of society's values. Black was the color of the night bar scene.
Washington DC has always been a small town, with a small town's class mentality. This led to a uniform awareness of everybody in one's strata, and the nosy Southern mentality meant that everyone was into everyone else's business... and one soon found one's supply of potential friends and lovers was quickly exhausted unless one got entirely outside of one's current circle.
To get outside, one dressed in black, and wore sneakers, and went to a watering hole.
There were plenty of bars catering to those who were being smarmy, such as the college bars, yuppie bars, lawyer bars, rich fuck bars, but sometimes one had to get outside the venue one normally appeared in, and some people had no venue. The venueless went to the watering holes, and wore black, and wore sneakers, and posed as The Classless, and thus did a new venue emerge.
Ron really was classless, being quite mad (or at least being quite convinced that he was mad), and so he began to wear his black, and wear his sneakers, and put mousse in his hair.
Besides, there was nothing but shit on television these days.
Ron usually went out early.
Ron like to hit happy hour. He was doing really quite well at suppressing the conditioned fear of crowds he'd been given at the clinic. He was actually able to shoulder his way through the teeming masses, shouldering his way past the groups of panhandlers who intimidatively blocked strategic points on the streets. The "Trolls" (as they had come to be known in popular idiom) often knew him, as a great many of them lived in his neighborhood.
Right around the corner from him a mere block away, at Fifteenth and "P" streets, NW was an abandoned apartment building that had been bricked up for almost eight years. The street people and the indigent crackheads kept breaking the bricks out, and the place was known as the Monster's Lair. You had to be truly insane to squat there, as a dead body was pitched out of the door every few days, and there was a constant stream of ambulances converging on the area. The place had such an ill reputation that neighboring apartments could soon attract only slightly less-seamy residents than the ones squatting in the Lair, and the neighborhood had been not-so-quietly going to hell for the last five years.
DC had always been famous for its widely distributed open-air drug markets, all-night bootleggers, and the Fourteenth street corridor had been a red-light district for nearly a century. All of these forces were beginning to concentrate in little hot-pockets of rabid anarchy, such as the area bounded by the alley between Sixteenth & Fifteenth streets, Thirteenth street, and Rhode Island/Massachusetts Avenues on the south, and "R" street on the north. The network of alleys permitted too many escape routes for the police to easily control the area, and in any case in this era of cost-cutting and deficit reduction, there simply was not enough funding to provide the manpower and materiel to close off the warzone and go house-to-house in a mission of redemption. The streets went from mere lawlessness into quiet riots, slowly simmering towards a rancid boil of festering rage.
The Federal Government had begun, quietly, to relocate as many of the functions of administration as possible to out-of-the-way sites. The CIA headquarters were moved to West Virginia, the FBI to Denver, which was regarded by most people who had ever been to Denver as a very bad move. Eventually the FBI concurred, and dispersed their central facilities to several locations throughout the Midwest. FEMA had always been in Frederick, MD, and the increased efficiency and reliability of employees hired from the relatively crime-free countryside had been noted. Telecommuting began to be a very large factor in government operations, and the InterNet became the preferred means of correspondence. A vast effeciency was engendered by mainframe service of common requests for documents and information, allowing rapid and massive downsizing. Also, a distributed government was considered much less vulnerable to bombing and takeovers.
Eventually, about all that was left of the once-massive Federal presence (and the concomitant economic mainstay) in the District of Columbia were the parks and museums, and of course the Government itself, that is the Legislature, the Presidency, and the Courts.
DC was being abandoned, and in the gap vacated by the Federal Establishment, a cancer was growing.
His hair looked marvelous. His sneakers were new, but they were about the cheapest that could be bought. His trench coat was tattered a bit around the edges. It had looked much worse before he had spent an hour or so on it with a needle and thread. His sweatpants and tee-shirt were cheap, and black.
He turned from locking the deadbolts on his door, and made his way downstairs. The Plexiglas-covered mirror showed nobody within jump-in range, and so he exited by the lobby door, and stepped down to the sidewalk. A short block took him to the beginning of the safe zone which had been extended (and was really quite vigorously maintained, though subtly so) westwards from Sixteenth Street, NW. It was about four in the afternoon, so he didn't have to deal with the wallowing hordes of commuters he would have encountered at a later hour. It was a sunny May day, one of those rare days of true spring in DC, a delightful day, actually. He would have loved to sit in Dupont Circle and attempt a tan, but the medications he was given affected him in such a way that he sunburned very easily, and could get a heatstroke through minor exertion. It promised rain, though there were very few clouds in the sky, as did every lovely spring day in the District. "If you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes..." was a trite but true saying in these parts.
Coming down the sidewalk towards him was an attractive young pre-yuppie couple, college education breathing out of every pore on their healthy young bodies. Ron made room for them, repressing an urge to scurry to one side to let the Masters pass. They passed without speaking. Things had gotten so hairy in the District in the last few years that almost everybody carried a lethal weapon, and speaking to someone out of your class could get you killed rather easily in DC. For a man of his evident low income, for him to fail to scurry away from the elegant rich was an invitation to get "pinned", stuck in passing with an acupuncture needle or something less cleanly though. He was the perfect target, too poor to litigate, and obviously well-raised enough to almost certainly not be carrying a pistol.
The cops and legislators had reacted to the near-universal armament of the DC denizens with characteristic ineptitude and sloth. Handguns were heavily criminalized. People started carrying lethal shockrods and tasers. These were made illegal. The next anti-personnel fashion was miniature blinding lasers, but these were almost instantaneously stamped out by shocked law-enforcement forces, as these were not in any way defensive weapons, as they took some time to operate, and their effects did not really begin until sometimes, days later. Unfortunately, they were able only to halt manufacture within the states, and could do very little about illegal imports, or those already in circulation. People then started to carry small concealed dart projectors, often built into modified portable radios. These were highly illegal, but as they fired extremely small darts with compressed air, they were not easily detectable, but tourists were often rudely shocked by the sometimes violent reactions by DC residents to certain orientations of personal radios. Some people carried bags of "goofer dust", obtainable through black-market voodoo suppliers, but while goofer dust would slowly agonize and terrify anyone inhaling it, it worked slowly, and was mainly an instrument of social terrorism, used almost exclusively by the "touch-me-not" faction.
These last were an outgrowth of the general escalation of the class war which had emerged nationwide in the last five years or so. The "touch-me-nots" simply refused to have anybody within four feet of them, and if you entered their range without following an elaborate protocol comprehensible only to the T-M-Ns, they would do a strange little monkey dance of intimidative gesticulation and subtle kicks, and while the T-M-Ns would converse as if you were engaged in a totally normal exchange, you would find yourself gradually bewildered, and then dosed with "goofer dust" which would leave you feeling sick, fearful, and aching for the next half-hour or so. If you were silly enough to come around them after that, they tended to invite you to a closed- doors club and inject you with ketamine, a hallucinogenic dissociative anesthetic which normally induced waking nightmares. While you were anesthetized, they might do something really annoying to you, like sew your little fingers together, clip your ears or something along that line. There were those who alleged that the T-M-Ns were the heirs to the fabled and reviled California Cannibal Cult's ways and means, but such people had a tendency to become very, very sick and leave town in a hurry. At any rate, most people simply learned to recognize T-M-Ns and avoid them. They usually dressed like bumblebees, anyway, bright clashing colors, chromic shades, and silly expensive pseudo-sportswear, so they were easy to spot and avoid.
Ron had the disadvantages of having been out of the ever-mutating mainstream culture since his... rebirth. He knew he had been to college. Small portions of his pretrauma days had surfaced, bit by pitiful bit, during his therapy at the clinic, tiny shards of his past working their way through the scar tissue of whatever event or therapy had sealed his past away from his present. He had no way to identify himself as a member of any particular clique, society or profession. So he wore his gothic black, and tried to conform to the evolving protocols of the emerging Classless Culture.
Angling up Massachusetts Avenue towards Dupont Circle he tried, in his slow, disjointed fashion, to ponder these trends in his life and in society as a whole. He knew that once, he had been a professional, and he also knew, that under the provisions of a 1993 law, his record had been sealed from the eyes of all except his therapists and certain law-enforcement professionals. His initial halting attempts to discover his past through records search had resulted in additional injections and therapy sessions, so he had given up his efforts. He knew that many of the Classless (in black) had also been professionals. So many were on the dole these days, and work was so hard to find. The black garb of the Classless precluded uninvited inquiries into personal histories, but he could tell from mannerisms and vocabulary that many of the Classless were of his generation, had perhaps been classmates. He couldn't find any answers... his apprehension was mentally crippling to the point where he often had to consciously will himself to stop and steel himself to withstand whatever threatening situation (such as buying a soda from a street vendor) he was about to encounter.
He crossed into Dupont Circle, passed the chess tables, and settled himself on the grass under a shady tree, and stared up at the new green foliage, and tried to find a place for himself in the world.
Lace had been by the "K" street office of her lawyers for a quick review of her affairs, and as she expected, all was in order.
Most of her money was locked up tight in the real property of her new firm, and quite a bit more was circulating through the maze of bureaucracy and legal affairs that comprised the regulatory process. Soon, though, she might see some rewards for her efforts. There were signs that her requests would be approved, that she might be able to get her product line off to a good start.
cHemitic Cultures, Inc., had finally gone into the black, and sales were up, a result of her infusion of personal money into the company. She had bought all public shares outright, and had gone private. Various agencies had taken a dim view of this, and had thrown a few stumbling blocks into the way of her little venture, but that had been resolved.
She had plunged almost all of the liquid capital at her disposal into cCI, but her company, as part of an aggressive but low-key advertising campaign, had cornered the market on microbrewery hardware.
She was also fighting a little patent war with, of all people, NASA. There were similarities between her equipment and a type of cell-culture device that NASA had patented, and it would be resolved in the courts. She thought it very likely that she might win, since the basis of the patent for NASA's device was the thin-volume concentric shell design, constantly rotating, which allowed cell-culture without piling up of cells. The cells never had a change to pile up, the gentle agitation kept them swirling about in the liquid nutrient medium. Her device, on the other had, used a licensed application of a well-known artificial heart principle to gently circulate cultures within a vertical vat of simple cylindrical design. Her lawyer was pretty certain that she would be granted final patent. NASA's design was specifically designed for certain types of cultures, and hers was designed for a totally different type altogether. Even if it looked like there was a possibility of her losing, perhaps the two parties might be able to work out some sort of agreement.
Behind her fashionable sunglasses, she wore special contact lenses. There were no corrections involved, just a lot of filtering. There was a lot of anti-UV, of course, as the ozone layer was still slowly fading out of existence, but she also had Infrared filtertints. There had recently been a major rash of blinding-laser incidents here in town, and she was damned if she wanted to wake up blind one day. There was some cosmetic tinting as well; she didn't want anyone remarking on the constant color-shifting of her eyes.
She'd always been pretty. She'd been very healthy indeed since she'd begun to feed regularly. Now, in the first flush of her young adulthood, she was a beauty. She strode gracefully up the slight hill of Nineteenth Street, NW, past the American Cafe, and commuters flowed around her, scurrying on their ways to their various suburban destinations. Occasionally, someone of a higher class would appraise her, remarking the fine fashion sense she always displayed. Her attire was not ostentatious, she was not a bit flashy. With her kind of looks and poise, flash would have been gilding the lily. This afternoon, she wore a simple peach ensemble, her hair in its usual Valkyrie braid, low-heeled pumps seeming to scarcely touch the sidewalk bricks. She paused to admire the lions on the gate of the house that was once Jeanne Dixon's house. The lions scowled fiercely, and she smiled back at them.
Metro took her to Woodley Park. She was keeping a base at the Sheraton these days, and occasionally entertained business guests there. For her hunting, she took her "guests" elsewhere.
Tonight was not a hunting night, but she didn't feel like hanging around a hotel lounge. She'd had her fill of the better restaurants in the area, and the higher-class lounges in the area were beginning to sicken her, and besides, she wished to reserve the people in them for her future needs. Her mysteriousness had always been her greatest attraction to her "clientele"; there was no reason to become too well known. Time, then, for a change of venue. A change of clothes was called for as well.
Tonight she would do something she seldom did. Tonight she would wear black.
Spandex was the ticket for the ladies these days. Spandex on Lace was also total overkill. Lace felt like being the baddest bitch in town tonight, so that was OK. Black Spandex tights and top, black cross-trainers... black hair worn loose and long, and she wore only a little bit of mascara to complete the image.
She almost never wore black these days, preferring to hide her differences within the expensive trappings of the moneyed class. Tonight, for the first time in almost a year, she would hide in plain sight.
She brushed her teeth, and smiled for the mirror. Nice teeth. Lots of them. Her maxillofacial growth had finally almost ceased (leaving her a bit prognathous), and she had the classic dentition of her kind. Her adult canines had been extended by bone growth first, then they had been followed by the bicuspids and the incisors. Next, she knew, would come the final emergence and extension of the secondary incisors, the indicator of her true adulthood. She knew that as far as her kind went, she was really equivalent to an eighteen-year old human female. As she matured further, she would come into an even greater strength and solidity of bone throughout her skeleton, but as far as form went, she was about as she would always be, for perhaps centuries to come.
She was thankful for the changes that had taken place, as she now looked less like a classic Draculoid, and more like a lady with excellent, if grandiose, dental health. There was, however, nothing she could do about her eyes and her hands.
Fortunately for her, Normals hadn't a clue, and didn't look for such things.
Lace was in fact amazed at the things that eluded the perceptions of the Normals. She had been out drinking with some regular folks one night, and had amused herself by twirling a cigarette around one finger for almost a minute, and the most she got from anyone by way of a remark was "Gee, Lace, you sure are fidgety tonight." There was a game going around town amongst the Caged, a sort of play-stalking of Normals. The rare few that noticed were so spooked by this that they generally bolted, and those that didn't bolt were marked by permanent facial expressions of total paranoia. The young ones would see this, and intensify their efforts. Occasionally they went too far, though for the most part, excesses could usually be attributed to newcomers. Somehow, Lace was revolted by this sort of display, yet somehow at times found herself vastly tempted to join in the awesome cheap fun of driving someone mad through mere prestidigitation. The young ones were not at all her crew, and she generally tried to avoid them and their games, lest the hidden observers note her presence and add her to The Cage.
The hidden observers were actively looking for people like her to add to The Cage. A great many of the young ones from all over the country had come to the District (it seemed to her that the Socials must have all gone into Political Science majors or something), and control efforts had also relocated here. She suspected that the agencies of control, whatever they might be, would be amazed to note that a fairly large number of others of her own kind, the uncaged, were slowly filtering into town. She was almost grateful for this (though it sparked a sense of foreboding), for it was that many more of her ilk for any potential captor to notice and attempt to track; less chance of her winding up in The Cage
In The Cage, she would most likely die.
She finished flossing, and pulled the threads of floss that inevitably collected around the razor edges of her teeth. She brushed again, and was finally satisfied. She crossed the room, and added a beltpack to her attire, and a baggy sweatshirt (black, of course) and brushed her hair a final time, coiled it into her trademark Valkyrie braid, and left for her night out.
She took a cab, "To the Uptown Theater, please," and then headed to the Metro, minutes later arriving at the Dupont Circle stop. She headed for the center of the Circle, pausing at the fountain (which hadn't worked in years - no city funds) to watch the sunset. She'd found years ago that it was possible for her to tan slightly through repeated (if slightly painful) exposure to the rays of the rising and setting sun, taking advantage of liberal doses of sunscreen and "tanning tips". The increasing volcanic activity worldwide had promoted absolutely beautiful sunsets, and she made it a point to watch them whenever possible.
Dupont Circle was a contradiction of the general decline and dissolution of freedom to associate outside of class. During the daytime, yuppies at lunch mixed freely with couriers, artists, tourists and bums. There was a thriving Circle subculture with rules of its own... in keeping with the eternal DC trend of professional exclusivity, the couriers hung together, the yuppies hung together, and the bums hung together. It was an interesting enough scene. The couriers were all (or almost all) Touch-Me-Nots (or at any rate, the two groups dressed similarly, pure spandex of any and all colors, though for the couriers, this doubtless provided traffic safety advantages. Who was imitating who? she wondered. She differentiated the two factions by behavior.), and any intrusion into their ranks would cause severe annoyance at the least.
The courier subculture had been defined rather rigorously early in the '90's, and entry was easy. You just had to be a bike courier, or have been a bike courier. Most of the couriers, despite a very bad reputation, were really a bunch of very hard working people, athletes by necessity, who busted ass all day and loved to have a beer after work. Dupont Circle, also known as "The Fruit Loop", due to the large number of cruising homosexuals, was an afterwork rallying place.
The couriers' reputation for insane risks in traffic during the day was not entirely undeserved, but was easily explained by their efforts to stay alive and whole in the face of traffic-maddened commuters and the equally insane unconcern for safety of the notorious DC taxi drivers. As far as safety went, actually, the large courier presence in the Circle between the hours of 4:00 to 10:00PM (weather permitting) was in no small measure responsible for what peace there was in the park. The couriers were a rowdy, but observant bunch, and violence was generally immediately reported via radio. Some couriers were of course, bad apples, harassing passersby, occasionally threatening people with their U-locks, but they were a total minority among their more professional brethren.
Lace reflected that the T-M-Ns were perhaps just a bunch of out-of-town losers, trying to make it in DC, drawn from whatever weird subculture it was that had produced them to the bright flashing colors and radical dood lifestyle of the couriers. She'd been hanging out here for years, and she had noticed a certain similarity to those couriers who were the newcomers. They didn't last, professionally, but they continued to infest the couriers' venues, going to the same parties, wearing courier colors, riding bikes. It was almost as if she was witnessing some strange ongoing attempt at social penetration. What of it, though? DC's insular cliques had their own subculturally-defined methods for rejecting outside intrusions...
Lace watched the couriers for awhile, listening to them talk shop, and was about to leave when she spotted a man, sitting lonely under a tree on the north side of the Circle. He wasn't bad looking, wasn't drinking, and he seemed to be alternating between states of withdrawal, fascination, loneliness, and alienation. Another nutcase, but at least he seemed to be one of the quiet ones. None of the Touch-Me-Nots had yet assigned themselves to harass him out of their territory (upon which he wasn't really intruding, but the T-M-Ns were really psychotic in their own way about that). He rather struck her as an addict in recovery, and with that thought, she suddenly knew him.
Ron.
It was getting dark. The sun had set an hour ago, and the weather, though still rather cloudless, was turning a bit brisk. Ron decided to go to the bar.
In the basement of the building housing The Front Page was one of DC's better nightspots, and it was here that Ron would rejoin the ranks of the Posing Classless. The dance floor was large, and the music was modern (if a bit tediously popular), and the place was filled with absolutely all kinds of people. One of the best things about this bar was that as a rule, T-M-N activity was strictly curtailed, by whatever means necessary. If someone wanted to come there high, or dance the monkey dances, that was not frowned upon by the management, as long as you paid the cover and bought a few drinks. Dosing a customer was not at all allowed, as there had been some unpleasantness over the subject in other bars. There had been an incident where a major hotspot had become a meeting ground for certain international elements, and when these elements were investigated by the Agency, a lot of good Feds had been permanently incapacitated by travellers who had used the activities of the Touch-Me-Nots as a cover for much more serious dosings. The T-M-N's goofer dust was truly annoying, but basically harmless. MPTP, which induced Parkinson's disease, and radioactives could not share that claim to innocuousness; and horribly dead Feds always have vengeful partners, and bars had closed, and heads had rolled. There were always a few Federales in any given bar, as well as scanners. Very bad things generally happened to those few fools who even attempted to goofer dust people in bars, and should there be any indication that staff was involved, the bar would be immediately closed, and liquor licenses would never be issued to any person even loosely associated with previous management. Besides, the Feds-on-the-spot had a nasty habit of carrying the new veridical drugs with them, and anyone out-of-town enough to try dosing someone in a DC bar was often found to be outside organized crime trying to get a foothold, or worse, one of the former agents of ex-communist powers. Such persons had a habit of disappearing.
Ron paid the ten dollar cover, and moved into a corner of the establishment, trying to get a decent seat for the evening. He doffed his coat, and bellied up to the bar.
"What'll ya have, mate?" asked the Aussie bartender, and Ron requested a large Urquell-water. Australian bartenders were all the rage; their shrewd country folksiness and absolutely-no-nonsense attitude made them favorites of everyone. Ron figured the quart of water would see him through the early part of the evening, and he hoped to be sharing a table with some decent folks who wouldn't let his coat get lost by the time he needed a refill. The place was filling up rapidly. The clinking of glasses, the blare of "happy music", and the dim roar of people gearing up for a serious night out filled his ears and mind, and he found himself beginning to relax as much as he ever could. He leaned back in the corner of his booth, and sipped at his water, and let his eyes wander over the crowd.
There were lots of young ladies here tonight. One of the things about the Classless scene, he reflected, was the relative abundance of young ladies. There were quite a few lookers, he noticed. He assumed that the reason for the favorable male-femme ratio was that if the women had wanted to restrict themselves to their own class, they would have had a whole lot less men to choose from, and greater competition from other women trying to grasp men of "known quality" (or lack thereof). Here the women chose the men on the basis of looks, personality or style... this was not the place you would go to meet a potential marriage partner, this was merely a mixing bowl and meat market, a place where you could dance the night away with a handsome stranger with no worries about social status.
Ron blinked. There was a woman-shaped hole in the air seated at the bar. There was a black woman seated at the bar next to her who was a lot easier to see than the invisible woman was. His eyes, which were really rather well-adjusted to the dark as a result of the photoreactive traits of the drugs he was given, simply seemed to not register her. He was staring, fascinated, when two things happened: First, he was suddenly aware that he must have been an engineer, as he found himself wondering what pigments could possibly so "stealth" a person (and tangentially wondering if this was Japanese or German fashion), and second, the woman leisurely rose and began to carry her drink towards him. He experienced a strange sensation of total eyestrain as he tried to follow her path towards him.
She crossed the beam of one of the mini-spotlights which dotted the bar, and her Spandex, which reflected more light than her skin did, glistened about the edges. She was some looker, with curves that would wreck Maserati's best cars had the curves been on a highway. As she stepped farther through the beam, her face was highlighted, the spot's overhead placement giving her face a rather sinister shadowing effect. She smiled mysteriously at him, and seated herself rather indolently at the booth next to him.
He blushed a bit, thanking the dim lighting for its concealment, and looked away from her. She was simply much too fine for him to pay any attention to her. Not being up to the supreme egotism necessary to try to pick up such a looker, he watched the floor show of incipient drunks for awhile, and then his gaze strayed back to the woman adjacent to him.
She was still a darker hole in the darkness, but he could make out the lines of form. Silhouette was all he could really see, but he remembered the way her curves had been revealed by the spot, and memory combined with perception. She was lovely. She had long dark hair in a Valkyrie braid. As he watched, she raised long strong hands to her hair, and pulled a dowel from the twists of braid, and shook her hair loose. It cascaded about her shoulders like the sea on a moonless night. She ran her hands through it, smoothing and arranging it, and he found that he wished to do the same... What would it be like, he wondered, to be alone with this nearly invisible stranger? How would that little scene play out? Not that he could ever have a chance.
She finished with her hair, and Ron caught her grinning at him. Nice smile, he thought. Little pointy edges of gleaming white showed through a mysterious Mona Lisa smile of barely-parted red lips, and he was suddenly struck by the fact that there seemed to be a lot of tooth that wasn't showing. But it would be rude to not say hello, so he did...
"Hi," she returned. "How've you been?"
He was taken a bit aback by the easy familiarity of her response, but he answered, "Allright. How about you?"
"I'm fine," she said. She seemed to be waiting for something.
Before he could stop himself (this was another side effect of his medications) he spoke what was on his mind... "You sure are!"
She laughed, tucking her chin, and smiling largely at him over her large index finger.
"Yep, I'm a big girl now..."
She didn't look directly into his eyes much, he would have had to drop his. Simply being this close to a vision of an angel (however dark an angel she appeared) was embarrassing him greatly. He was bothered more by this feeling he had of somehow... knowing... this woman. She must, he decided, come from his previous life.
"Ummmm, I don't know how to say this, but..." he paused, and now she was looking at him directly, with her full attention. Her large green eyes seemed to have an inner light of their own, and momentarily captivated him. She blinked, actually batting her eyelashes at him, and he blushingly forged ahead.
"Do I know you from before?"
She seemed a bit baffled for a minute, confused, and then she looked as if she'd made up her mind on something she'd been wondering about.
"Yes, Ron, you do know me. It's been almost four years... You really don't remember me do you? (Ron shook his head, no.) Jeeze, whatta blow to a girl's pride. I'd think you'd remember me..."
"But I don't," he said. "I don't remember much before, oh, say '96. And you're right, just looking at you, you're right, you'd think I'd remember!"
She grinned at him again, that same funny gesture of head down, lips half-parted, elegant long hand gracefully folded, finger across lips.
"You're so very right, you should remember. Just looking at me... well, what do you think you see?"
"A very beautiful woman!" he breathed. "Were we good friends?"
"It must have been hard to forget me, Ron. We weren't enemies, Ron, not at all. Don't you remember anything?" She wasn't giving him any silent laughter now, she looked very serious. She folded her hands in her lap for a second, then picked up her drink and tossed it off in one fluid motion, and then her hands were back in her lap again.
"I'm so sorry, but I don't even know your name..."
She seemed to be in the grip of some storm of emotion, and he wondered what he had done to her, back in that formless past shared by his body but not by his mind. She seemed to be on the verge of tears, when she pulled herself back together.
"Did I do you wrong?" he asked her, surprising himself that he could feel a remorse for something he didn't remember doing...
She looked at him from the corner of her eye, a brilliant flash of green from a mascara-shadow within shadow, and suddenly the glistening of a tear appeared on her cheek, and she so swiftly dabbed it away. She composed herself, and turned to look at him, and there was a great sorrow on her face that she was struggling to hide from him.
"No, Ron. You've done me a lot of good. If there's been any wrong done, there's probably more blame that would fall to me. You really remember nothing?"
"Like I said, I don't even..."
"Lace," she interrupted.
"That's a start," he said.
"A fresh start," she said, and the tears dried.
They sat there all night. She had moved in closer to him, sitting next to him in the booth. She sat uncomfortably close to him, and he was rather flustered as a result. As the evening wore on, the din increased to the point where conversation was nearly impossible, so he was spared the embarrassment of making inane, inept conversation. He wouldn't have known what to talk about, anyway. For the time being he was willing to bask in the company of such a beautiful female as Lace was.
Occasionally, she would shout over the din that she was going for a drink, and she did this often. He didn't know where she was putting it all. She certainly wasn't getting very drunk, or if she was drunk, her coordination didn't seem to be suffering. She did get a bit looser as time went on.
Once, she headed for the ladies' room, and while she was gone, another young woman occupied her seat for awhile, and tried to strike up a conversation with Ron. Interestingly enough, she also was very dark somehow, and he could scarcely make out her features. She had a big smile, and big green eyes, and she kept giving Ron this pupils-dilated look that made him want to try to kiss her... but when Lace came back, there was a peculiar little exchange of what Ron could only see as some sort of strange little womens'-ritual, rapid exchange of sign (Ron knew of, but could not "jive"), posture and glaring, and the newcomer gave ground rapidly. Lace gave her retreating back a rather venomous look, and turned again to Ron.
"What do you say to a walk around outside?" Ron agreed that all of the smoke was getting to him, and that he could use some fresh air. They donned their outerwear, and headed for the door.
They climbed the stairs, and he was impressed by the grace she displayed, considering that she'd had about twelve shots of tequila.
She had a way of walking too close to him, and he was aware of her clean scent, no perfume other than her own, and it was a special perfume, strong but not at all unpleasant. She glided along next to him, the tiny tappings of her footfalls scarcely audible. His own feet were less sure, and his self-consciousness increased almost by the step.
"Let's go into the Circle," she said, and he followed her.
It was midnight, and the traffic was not bad at all. They crossed into the Circle and seated themselves on the peripheral benches. Across the Circle, a guitar wailed amid a crowd of cheesey nightlife. Under the orange sodium glare, they faced each other, and Ron said:
"I don't know where to begin..."
"It might be easier if I asked you a few questions... Ron, what have you been doing for the last four years?"
"I've... well, I, umm." He tried to stop stammering and collect himself. Lace waited patiently. He started again.
"My life, as far as I can remember, began almost three years ago. I was released from a mental hospital. I don't know how I came to be there, or what my life was like before. They told me that they tried a new treatment on me, that the treatment erased all of my specific memories from before the treatment. They had to tell me my own name... and when I asked them why I had been committed, they said they could never tell me... that it was essential to my treatment that I never try to find out.
"Since my release, I tried to find out a little bit about myself, but it seems that all of my records have been collected and sealed. There was some kind of court order; I couldn't get anywhere. My therapists found out and increased my medication for awhile, and my medication isn't something that I like to do a lot of. But I do want to know what got me in my present fix. I'm a ward of the District, they pay my rent and doctor bills... and I can't get a job anywhere, and therefor I can't leave town. I don't even have my diploma... All I am is a number in some files, and an arm to the nurses who give me my injections. What do you know?"
Lace just sat there, and didn't say a thing. She would have seemed lost in thought except for the gleam of her eyes, which never left Ron. Soon, she spoke.
"Ron, I probably have a lot to do with your commitment. I am not going to sabotage your therapy by telling you any details... but I want you to know that I am your friend, I mean you no harm, and I never meant for anything like this to happen.
"You met me, and we were lovers for a time, and, well, I was the crazy one then, and you did a lot to set my feet on the path I'm taking now. I have to thank you for that."
"You're welcome. We were lovers? What did I ever do to deserve a girl like you?" He couldn't believe his ears. How could he have ever been with such a woman?
"That's a good question... considering what has become of you, it is a very good question. I don't think that you ever did anything bad to deserve me. Nothing at all, it wasn't your fault..."
"No, I didn't mean it like that, I meant it like, well, you're more woman than I could have ever dreamed about being with. You're, like, a goddess. Where did we meet?"
"You were teaching a night school class, math for G.E.D., and I was a student. We just sort of somehow seemed to hit it off, I guess because I kept asking all of these questions about logical operations, and I guess you liked that. I guess it was your specialty... I dropped out of sight after the course ended, for reasons I won't go into now, and you made all of these efforts to find me, to see me, and I guess it hit a sweet spot in me. I was nineteen then, I'm twentyfour now. It's 1999 AD, and I'll be twentyfive on New Millennia Day... want to celebrate it with me?"
"I guess. You say you don't want to tell me anything more?" He was slightly crestfallen, and she smiled again, that strange mysterious smile, like she was laughing at him while being totally serious. Her eyes sparkled with a solemn invitation, and he was suddenly aware of how close she was, how wonderful was her smell, how perfect her body, and for the first time in his memory, he wanted a woman, and she was the woman he wanted.
"I think I would like that. New Millennia Day, I mean," He tried to move closer to her, but she suddenly stood, and smiled at him a bit more widely... she seemed quite amused, despite her serious face...
"No, Ron... I really don't want you to know anything more about our old relationship. But I had better tell you something... It's very important.
"I am dangerous. I have weird friends... and they are really dangerous. You want to kiss me, I know, and I want you to kiss me, want to kiss you, but you really need to ask yourself if you want to be around a dangerous woman, with her dangerous friends... To share any part of my dangerous life with me... you need to think about that, think hard. You may have to live with the consequences... more than you are now living with them!"
She had turned slightly as she spoke, and was now looking back at him over her shoulder. Her smile was a little wider, a little wilder.
"Do you mean that you're in some kind of spy business or something?" he asked her, "Or are you a cop?"
"Actually, I am an independently wealthy investor. I am a very rich girl. Money and power. All of that shit, ya know?"
She turned to face him again, and as she turned the contours of her form were outlined by the harsh sodium glare. She was magnificent, but there was something about her, something hidden in the lovely woman-scent, the smooth curves of her face, the way that her hair billowed about her in the soft spring nightwind that began to whip up about them, something that made her words ring in his ears. Something that made him give serious thought (something he was not at all used to) to her words. "Do you think you're worth the risk?" he asked her, and she nodded.
"I am definitely worth the risk," she told him, and he had to agree. "Look at me, Ron... you were mine before, and I hurt you, and I didn't even mean to do that. You're suffering now, and you don't even have a clue why, do you? No... but you might get hurt worse, far worse, this time. I haven't had a man that I really wanted since you... and while I no longer know you, I think I would like to learn again - who you are."
"You're like a dream, you just pop in out of nowhere... I hate being close to people, and I feel comfortable around you, women make me nervous, and attractive women especially so, but I feel almost at home with you. Whatever else happens, I sure want to see you again!"
"You know, this is almost how it was when we first hooked up... but now I am older and wiser... though not by much. I'm the woman who was the girl you loved." She moved closer, and a strange mixed emotion shot through him, dread, and a bit of near-panic, and also, lust, and something he couldn't recognize as the renewal of pairbonding after long separation. He was almost in her arms now, and he looked up into her eyes...
Her eyes were wide, and clear and the most transparent green of deep tropic waters he had ever seen, and they were the gateway to her soul, and her soul wanted his, and they were kissing, and all of that Spandex-clad feast of a woman was wrapping herself around him, and she was strong, and healthy, and her taste was the taste of sweet living rivers, and he felt his approach to the rapids.
Sometime much later (or so it seemed) they broke apart, and they both said, laughing at their synchronicity, "I guess you do want me!"
"I hate to be any more cliche than I have to be," she said, laughing a bit, "But, ummm... do you go there often?"
"Not a whole lot. That could change..." He was ready to make some serious changes in his life, if it meant that this strange, but somehow not a stranger, woman could be in his life...
"Where do you live?"
"Fifteenth & Massachusetts, Northwest," he told her.
"Ohmigod," she breathed, "At the same old house?"
"I guess. You knew me from there?"
"Yeppers, I did. It's where we, ummm, really met. Don't you feel scared living there next to the Monster's Lair?"
"Nope," he said, "I have serious bars on the window."
"You didn't have them then..." she looked pensive for a moment, then said, "Did the Mental Health Department pay for them?"
"I guess so. They were there when I got there..."
"Uh-huh. That makes sense." Lace seemed a bit worried about something, and Ron inquired as to the cause.
"Nothing I can tell you about. Remember, I don't want to screw up your therapy? Do me a favor though, Ron... If you can help yourself, don't tell anybody about me, or I can't see you at all. If you're going to say anything, tell me now..."
"You're my little secret, babe," said Ron, unknowingly saving his life.
They parted ways. Ron just sat and watched her as she wended north from the Circle. She seemed to fade as several trees and the central fountain occulted his view of her. He did not see her hail a cab at the northern sidewalk.
He wondered just what to make of her, this mysterious woman with her strange wild smile. Rich, she had said... he knew from legend and experience that the very rich became almost inhuman in some cases. The mere capacity to make decisions that (in modern economic climates) that could affect the lives of many thousands of people would cause a certain... warpage. That didn't seem to be the case here, but what, realistically, did he have to go on?
She was certainly lovely, though, and he couldn't forget that kiss. After all, despite the fact that somewhere in his mind had resided a knowledge of kissing, it was still the first kiss he could consciously remember.
He wanted to run home and think about all of this... and so he did.
Lace ran home, as well, but she did it a little more circumspectly. She took a few different taxis to different parts of town, and finally, she was dropped off at a fashionable bar in her own "neighborhood". She had a final tequila shot, and then headed for home.
What had she been thinking when she approached Ron? She had seen him there in the Circle, she had positioned herself where he must have seen her. He had shown no sign of recognition, not even a sign of recognition suppressed. She was just another lovely one of the Classless. His gaze hadn't even really lingered on her, not longer on her than on anyone else in the park, at any rate. She had followed him into the bar though, and had sat next to him, and he hadn't even known her then. She was hooked by then... she had to know why.
She showered to remove the smell of the drinks she'd had spilled on her. Toweling herself dry, she reflected on advice given her by Fred and also by Cala... considering that Cala had been Fred's protegee, she wasn't surprised by the similarity of the advice.
Paraphrased, the advice was, don't get too attached to Normals. For one thing, you don't age at the same rate as they do, and you will, all too soon, have to change your venues... and you will have to lose yourself from any attachments from these people you allow yourself to love. Don't get too attached to them... the heart you break may be your own.
There was also a little problem, rather a universal among her kind, she gathered...
You mustn't let Normals know what you are. (Well, that was obvious!) If they knew, they'd kill you, or they'd go mad under the strain of dealing with your differences, and either way, the only sure thing was that if they were dead, they couldn't get you killed or driven out.
Being killed, she reflected, (and I don't want to die, not anymore...) was probably preferable to being driven out. She had no wish to be separated from her money, her possessions, her freedom. What would she do if she were suddenly thrust again into her former mode, homeless, haunting the basements of construction sites and parking garages? She wouldn't be able to carry off her elegant seductions, and she might have to return to monthly killing... she almost thought being dead might be preferable, but she had tried that.
It hadn't worked.
Suicide was not an option.
Besides, she had something to live for now. She had a Cause.
That was something else that her mentors had taught her. There was one thing that could help her, and those like her, those pitiful Morals who had a capacity for social emotion. Find a Cause, something greater than oneself, something worth dying for, something worth living for... for they had told her, you will go on living, you won't die anytime soon, not soon at all, and your life will be ever more tolerable, even enjoyable... if you have a Cause.
She had a Cause. It did give her strength, it gave hope not only to her, but to others of her kind as well... should they choose to accept it. Should she be able to fulfill the dream she had... well, she could find another Cause then, but she was attempting to joust with the windmill of all of her kind. She sought the One True Cure...
Lace Harvester knew she could never find, but must instead make, The Holy Grail.
It seemed that cHemitic Cultures, Inc., might be the tool she would use to fulfill the demands of her Cause.
The last time she had seen Fred, he had told her that he was gone from DC, possibly forever, possibly leaving the world in a body bag, very likely this very evening. He told her that he had set wheels in motion... told her not to get caught up in those wheels. There was money for her. He made her memorize (easily enough, as she had a near-eidetic memory, as did most of her people) some codes. He told her to go to a certain bar, and to look for a certain woman. His verbal description was backed up by a mental image, making this unknown woman seem like an old friend. He said that he would try to rendezvous later, at another bar, and then he was gone.
She had gone to that bar, and met the woman, one interesting lady.
Cala was her name, yes, Calamitia, it meant Calamity. She had been an orphan during the Spanish-American war, and she had been found by Fred, and raised by him. She had been eight when he had found her, and had begun to feed at sixteen, as had Lace. The difference was, that Fred had guided her in the manner of his ways, not the ways of her greater kind... and while she didn't particularly care much for Fred's Moral precepts, she honored them, to honor her mentor. That much Morality she understood. She came to understand, through the passage of time, and years of observation, that this strange Ethics for Vampyrs that Fred had formulated was allowing her to live a longer, more enjoyable life than did many of her ilk. The ones who slew recklessly, or who held Normals in total contempt, tended to overreach their grasps, and often found those Normals they regarded so contemptuously burning them alive.
Cala was a century old, and had been many places, had done many things. She declined to regale Lace with tales of her exploits, and instead concentrated on giving her clues on recovery of a legitimate role in life. Cala and Fred went back a long way indeed, and they had intertwining obligations, and yes, Cala would take Lace on as an apprentice, unusual as this was. As a rule, Wild Children such as herself were allowed to martyr themselves. There were certain conditions, though...
First, Lace would live exclusively at Cala's lair, and would be a complete secret from the outside world. This was pretty easy to accept, as Lace knew she was being hunted.
Second, she must take instruction from Cala, or Fred, if he survived, on the principles they had to teach her. This included a lot of Traditional martial arts. She'd already had some of that, from Fred. What she learned from Cala was the means to fully understand the fight-dream gestalt, an mathematic/linguistic artificial-language construct which enabled a cognitive mode which analyzed the probability field that was her dream-visualization of the instinctual combat reflexes of her people.
Third, she must allow them to trace, bury, and eliminate her old identity, and she must never try to search out her old life. She must consider her parents dead. This was not a problem. After her first kill, as she cried on a beach in Ocean City, Maryland, she had considered herself as having died. Her parents were dead in her mind and soul, had been dead for years, along with all friends and associations with her former life; a meeting with any of this class might inevitably doom her. In her mind, it was as if she had killed her previous life when she had killed her first man.
Fourth, they would provide her with a new identity. She would appear to come from another place, with another name, and while these false credentials would be solid, she should try to avoid all serious inquiries into the validity of these specious bona fides.
Fifth - she didn't really have much of a choice. She could allow them to set her up in a new life, or she was on her own, hot as the DC streets in August, with every spook in the country looking for her. A year or two in seclusion, and her normal maturational processes would disguise her. Once mature, though, she would look the same for perhaps centuries to come. Massive plastic surgery would last for only so long as it took her to heal. She had been given a set of genes at conception, and those genes would continue to express themselves as nature had intended.
Lace accepted this, hungrily. It was what she needed, exactly. It would get her off of the streets, out of harm's way, and she would learn what she needed to know to survive. She had decided, some time ago, that survive she would. Living with Ron had shown her that she need not be an evil predator, living in fear and pain until her body forced her to hunt. She could live a life that could pass for Normal, with a nibble here and there. After her three years in the Wild, the comforts of regular bathing had been incentive enough to come in from the cold.
Now that we have settled this, let's go to meet Fred, suggested Cala. They moved towards the door.
Fred was having a difficult time of it down in Georgetown. The alleys of Georgetown had seen many a spook hunt. He was loath to move the chase to the venue of Georgetown University campus. He had never attended there, but had only casually wandered the environs of one of the premier sources of raw spook-recruits.
The medieval atmosphere of Georgetown campus would have been all too redolent of bad Hammer Films vampire hunts, anyway. He didn't feel like lurking in the maze of Gothic structures that lined the banks of the Potomac. Besides, so many of this night's opposition would be vastly more familiar than was he with the nooks and crannies. So he tried a few simple maneuvers.
First he ran along the C & O canal. He didn't think that vehicular chases would be easily possible on the Canal, but he didn't reckon on the presence of Capitol Hill bicycle police. Also, the hoofbeats of pursuing horsemen echoed weirdly from the buildings along the canal... so he ran up 29th street, crossing "M" street, and tried to lose himself in the western uphill side of Rock Creek Park.
The greatest weakness of his kind, he reflected, as he ran himself into blind staggers, was the way that the metabolic system allowing for much greater speed sacrificed aerobic endurance. Rather like the cheetah, he could outrun almost anything over a short distance, but he would pay for that speed with a near-collapse when he reached the "runner's wall". He could sustain an extremely brisk Olympic walk for quite a while, but the Mainstream capacity to jog endlessly was forever beyond him. His system would recover more quickly than that of a horse, and he could make better time when up and running... but the bicycles would kill him.
He crouched in the weeds by the little playground at Dumbarton street, and waited, trying to still the gasping breaths which racked him. His heart pounded furiously... what he needed most was the opportunity to enter the special sleep of his kind which allowed massive anabolic storage of oxygen against time of need. Until he could do this, he was little more than a very old very healthy man. He couldn't afford the time needed to withdraw fully into the prana-yogic state which came so naturally to him in times of recovery from aerobic stress... but he could will himself, as his breathing quieted, and the fever of overheated flesh subsided, to concentrate with that inward eye and touch.
He willed oxygen into his cells, and waited, and though his Hunger swelled hugely, he patted the plastic pints of mechanically-hyperoxygenated O-positive in a storage vest worn over the kevlar vest, smoothed his overcoat and waited.
A bicycle whizzed past, a rather musclebound Capitol Hill cop respiring heartily up the slight hill toward "P" street. His partner came following about fifteen seconds later... and Fred risked pushing aside a concealing bit of shrub to look down the trail towards "M" street. His powerful vision detected no pursuit, nor the telltale glimmer of active infrared illumination.
He came out of his hiding place, and streaked up the path towards the last cop. He hadn't really kicked in the afterburners yet, but he drew steadily closer to the cop, running on the grass to silence his wide-spaced footfalls. Soon he was behind the cop, whose street-sense prompted him to turn his head.
Fred took out his entire face with a Krav Maga grip, spread fingers penetrating through eyes into the cranial cavity as Fred pounced forward to grab the left handbrake. The bike's front brake locked, and the cop, minus most of his facial bones, flew over his handlebars as the bike slewed left. Fred somersaulted over the bike as it hit the ground, barely retaining his grip on the handlebars. Fortunately, the bike was a sturdy Trek mountain bike, and the frame didn't snap under the stresses... and as the cop hit the ground, Fred slid to a stop, and mounted the bike, and fairly flew back towards "M" street. The first cop, nearly at "P" street, locked his brakes, slewing to a stop, then started in pursuit.
It was Tuesday night in Georgetown, and while there was a bit of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, there was none of the usual snarl associated with a weekend in the Tourist/Elitist party-zone. So it was that Fred was able to jump the curb at the end of the bike trail, zoom through the intersection where Pennsylvania Avenue merges into "M" street, and ride against traffic down the cloverleaf to the Rock Creek Parkway. He hopped onto the bike trail beside the Parkway, and hung a right onto the Canal Towpath bike trail, and then accelerated towards 29th street. He took a left, and was at "K" street below the elevated Whitehurst Freeway in seconds. He took a right... and somewhere behind him he heard a screech of brakes and a smash and a scream as the bike cop pursuing him emerged onto 29th and was promptly hit by a car in search of parking. From the sound of sudden cursing, it seemed that the cop wasn't out of the chase yet... and in the forced break in the chase, the cop was doubtless radioing in Fred's location, if he hadn't done so already.
I've got to make it across the bridge, thought Fred, wheezing and gasping as his anaerobic reserves were rapidly depleted, I've got to pace myself, the bridge, the bridge...
Above him, the Whitehurst Freeway began to curve right towards its terminus, where it merged in a spaghetti-bowl pattern with "M" street and the Francis Scott Key Bridge into Virginia.
The Texan was on the roof of the USA Today building. A jet screamed by him, scarcely 600 meters away. The employees of Gannett, Inc. had gotten used to jets flying by every few minutes, often below the windows of their offices, so he thought that he could accustom himself to the roar and looming of the flights which would pass him every nine minutes. The programmable police scanner beside him, ROM frequency lock-out chip altered to allow reception of the special bands reserved to the Federal Establishment in DC, broke squelch with a squawk of distress.
A bike officer reported that the escaped felon had knocked his partner off of his bike, stolen the bike, and fled into the canal area. The officer couldn't pursue further because of a bent rim and flat tire, but the suspect was westbound on "K" street, NW, under the Whitehurst elevated.
The Texan thought back to the time he had watched Fred best all comers at a game of "TriMaze With Trolls". A young and rather bored computer programmer had made use of the often extensive idle-time on one of the Shop's Crays by writing a wonderful little game wherein the game character was pursued through a three dimensional maze of ever increasing complexity. The map room holoscreen had become an after-hours gathering spot of ever-increasing popularity as everybody tested their mazegame skills.
The game was a wonderful test of those skills, because of the chaotics elements thrown in by the programmer. The mazes were simple at first, but each successfully run maze disappeared to be replaced by a maze whose central dividing element was the solution track of the previous maze. There was the added element of vertical movement, where it had not been used successfully before... Fred's stratagem was to run most often on single levels, reserving the vertical option to the endgame... and the Texan had been a bemused, rather sodden (with bar bet winnings) eavesdropper on a games-theorist's post-game dispute with Fred and the programmer over the applicability of these games strategies in Real Life.
Fred had then led a merry drunken chase through a series of map overlays, with the solid linear maze elements replaced with zones-of-influence representing "trolls" (hostile agents). The "trolls" would, in Real Life, tend to line up in such a way as to prevent re-use of previously successful escape routes. Therefor, the best strategy was to reserve the best possible escape route for last, as the "trolls" had anticipatory sense only in retrospect as regarded elimination of escape routes. Eventually, all escape routes but one would be cut off. The idea was to paint yourself into a corner... with the point of the corner being the final escape from the maze into the goal area.
The Texan had an excellent suspicion as to the goal in this case.
He turned up the volume of the police scanner, and then bent to his nightscope.
Once, there had been a bar in DC known as Poseur's. It was a very successful bar, as far as creating a social scene went. It had been filled, in the Eighties, with a slick young crew of depressed, bored children of the rich, and these kids had grown up to be suicides, artists, and hip young lawyers from Hell. They had never forgotten the great times they'd had at Poseur's, though, and though Poseur's was long dead and (rightly, in the Texan's mind) buried, the fashion statement lived on. Bars all over town hosted "Poseur's Night", and people in black flocked to listen to the latest in alternative nineties power-pop.
Across the busy intersection at 34th and "M", a short stone's throw from the Key Bridge, was the canal, and in the area between Poseur's and the Canal was a vacant lot, and there it was that these children of the rich and powerful had spent their evenings, between cheap shooters and beers at the bar. Below the vacant lot, well, that was another world.
There was the Aqueduct.
Below the spaghetti-bowl confusion of the intersection of the Whitehurst Freeway, the Key Bridge, and "M" street was the ruined remnants of the aqueduct which had once crossed the river to Alexandria, Virginia. There was a little eroded US Park service sign explaining all of the historical details, and the foundation structure was still visible. The aqueduct itself, though, was really ancient history. Fred ditched the bike in the Canal and headed for the stairs which climbed steeply up the sides of the column which supported the roads overhead. The stairs weren't entirely enclosed, but the maze of support columns, bridgework and safety girders precluded any easy observation or riflework. He paused to rest next to a bit of graffiti that read, "You have left the real world behind. All hope abandon, here at the aqueduct!" Fred wasn't about to give up hope, slim though his chances might be.
There were no sounds of immediate pursuit, no running feet, no screeching of brakes. Well, that meant little, he could have been anticipated, and the killing ground might have been already defined, waiting only for the quarry. His gasping subsided a bit, and he dared risk a bit of withdrawal into the world of healing. He opened the end of one of the pints of O-positive, and drank it down, feeling the radiation of satisfaction from his stomach as it was rapidly absorbed. The feeling was not unlike that of a football player with severe dehydration getting a pint of saline solution intravenously during a tough game. His headache went away, his breathing improved, and something like strength returned to him. He popped another, and drank it more slowly, not wishing to risk cramps.
This could be my last meal, he thought. Might as well try to enjoy it. Somehow, though, he found no savor in it.
In about five minutes, he felt composed enough to make his try for the other side of the river. He doubted he'd make it. He almost wished that he had taken the bike cop's radio, but the potential remote activation of the mike and concomitant tracking had made that a bad idea, and besides, there really hadn't been enough time. The radio traffic might conceal more than it revealed; anyone with an excellent position would be in place by now, and wouldn't give away their location over the air.
He gathered himself, and began to climb.
Cala and Lace waited on Prospect Street at 34th. They were to meet Fred here, if only momentarily. Across the street was a fairly new Honda 650, gassed up and ready to go. Fred need only pass them by, hop onto the bike and get across the river. They would meet again someday, perhaps in this century, perhaps in the next. There was a packet containing a large amount of cash, and false ID beneath the seat of the motorcycle... the problem would be getting the bike and Fred together. Where would he come from, and how much heat would be after him? wondered Lace, and from the look on Cala's face, she was similarly concerned.
There! It was Fred, walking toward them on the Key Bridge. He must have come up the stairs at the aqueduct. So far he hadn't been spotted, it seemed. Cala looked about them for signs of cops. There wasn't an obvious cop in sight, an ominous sign in itself.
Suddenly, a glare of high-intensity ultraviolet flickered from their right, down by the "Exorcist stairway". Cala saw Fred's face light up with actinic glare from the reflected laser light, saw the beam focus as he began to dodge about, trying to elude the beam. The telltale spiral pattern of computer-aiming traced itself across his face as the beam narrowed, seeking his eyes. The reflections intensified as he hurriedly donned reflective sunglasses, but in the moment he paused, a dart appeared at his waistline. Cala looked toward the stairs, and saw a man lying prone with a scoped rifle with the characteristic large bore of a dartgun, and she stooped as he reloaded and fired again, and she pitched a bottle from the street at him with inhuman power and accuracy. The side of his head caved in, but the laser stayed on Fred, who was visibly staggering under the triple impacts of a kilojoule of UV-A and two darts full of some unknown witches'-brew. He clung to the rail, trying to keep moving, and across the river, atop the USA Today Building, a red point-source of coherent light winked into being, and as Fred slung himself over the edge of the Key Bridge railing, his head vanished in a spray of blood.
The Texan hurriedly disassembled the .50 M60 and ran from the roof.
"Thick and thin, Fred," he muttered as he pounded down the stairs, "We been through all of that..." Right or wrong, he had owed Fred that coup de grace. No partner of his was going to end up on some shop table being slowly taken apart, mind, body and soul. Let them fish Fred's body out of the Potomac, and do what they would to it. His friend and fellow of forty years was forever beyond the reach of any who would harm him. Orders had been issued to take Fred alive, and the Texan knew what befell Normal agents who were taken alive, and Fred was a vampire, and thought to be a turncoat. Death was much kinder by far than the mad scientists of the Medical Inquiries Division.
Cala grabbed Lace, who was poised to run for the banks of the Potomac, Lace whirled to face Cala, hatred, despair and agony warring on her visage. She halted her incipient assault when she saw Cala swallow a lump of pain, and Cala spoke: "He's gone. A hundred and twenty years... all finished. We must save ourselves now. Come on!"
The Honda started immediately, and Cala nearly burned the back tire off getting them out of Georgetown.