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Internet Message Format | 1994-07-28 | 13KB

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From: [e-mail] (Ridley McIntyre)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.archives
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER v2.0
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Date: 27 Jul 1994 15:18:16 -0400
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Well, some of you may remember this about a year back. The last in my
Year Of The Rat series which included BOY, MONKEYTRICK and SEVEN. If
I remember rightly, six chapters were posted and then it sank without
trace, but that's because it was all getting too complicated and not
even *I* knew where it was going.

So, here we go again. A completely re-written version of the story which
ties up all the loose strings in the series. New characters, new story,
but the same old title. If you like/hate it, mail me. Same with any
questions you'd like to pose about life, the universe, and all things
dark and cyberpunk...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Ridley McIntyre

              GHOSTDANCER

                   1.

"Everything  you  imagine  exists.  Even  if  it  only  exists  in   your
imagination."  - Big Pierrot



Nightingale Medical Centre. Red Sector 16. New Atlantic City. The Year Of
The Rat.

 "I  got  a  new job, Reb." Cody Ingram slides her hands into the pockets
of  her baggy  black  leather  jacket  and listens to the crickets in the
field. An edgy silence descending between her and her younger  sister sat
on the hot metal bench.

 Reb looks down at the grass. Up at the technicolour blue sky.  Over  the
field  at  the  other  kids  playing  tag on a huge steel climbing frame.
Everywhere but at Cody. Her voice, when she does speak,  is  deeper  than
most  would  expect of a girl of fifteen. Her words slurred and difficult
to make out. Reb sometimes feels embarassed to talk; but  this  is  Cody,
and  she  knows  that  no  matter  how  bad  her  voice  gets, her sister
understands.

 "You didn't come... to visit me this month... I... thought you had  left
me... I thought they... would switch me off."

 Cody sighs. "I told you I had to go to San Angeles. The  Callies  needed
me  to  do some corp-work. Infiltration, that kind of thing. I sent money
back." She  moves  up to the bench and sits next to her sister. Tries  to
put  her  arm  around her, to comfort her, but Reb  just  slides  further
away.  "Sometimes I have to go where the work is. I told you before, when
I went to Europe. I would never let them shut you down. I made a promise,
remember?"

 Reb nods to herself. "I just... thought..."

 "Yeah," Cody says. "Well you know what Dad would say, don't you? Thought
stuck his ass out the window and went outside to push it back  in  again.
Don't think, girl. *Know*."

 Reb looks down ashamedly. "Yeah..." The word a soft whisper on the wind.

 "So, anyway," Cody continues, "I got a  new  job.  Footwork.  Harlequins
want  me to find somebody for them. A girl. Looks like she might have run
away from some corporate dustzone or something. But  she's supposed to be
here, on the island. Pays well, and all I have  to  do  is  snoop  around
some."

 "What's her... name?"

 "Ghostdancer."

                * * *

As the sun sets over the island, the air cools and the humid day  becomes
a hot wet night. At twilight, the first few spatters  of  rain  start  to
sizzle on the soft tarmac of Red Sector's streets.

 Cody takes a quick look at the slate grey sky above Terminal.  A  police
Locust  aerodyne,  bulbous  head  and black, evil body with vectoring jet
thrusters  for legs, skims across the skyline on a  routine  patrol.  The
police don't send ground traffic into Terminal anymore. Not after the Tag
Team  wars  a  few  months  back.  The  wars may have killed off the last
remnants of the gangs, but there are still no-go  zones  on  the  island.
Safe  havens  for  what the kids  call  keiki - "business". She pulls her
hands out of the pockets of her black leather jacket and steps  into  the
Apres Mort. Inside, the keiki is thick enough to choke on.

 A blade of twilight slices through the mist  to the bar at the far  end.
There's  a  background  hum, a mixture of talk from the few kids here and
ambient sounds from the  darkwave  selection  on  the  cd  jukebox.  Cody
glances around the main  room  of  the  bar,  looking  for  one  pony  in
particular,  nodding  to  the kids she knows as she walks past them. They
talk fast and soft, non-stop, in a  melange  of  American   English   and
Japanese.  Romaji,  they  call  it.  Red  Sector Patois. Cody has learned
enough in  four  years  here  to  get  by,  but,  as in everything, there
are intracacies that will never be fathomable. Language is a mindset.

 She  finds  her  pony  in  the  games room. Jacked into a hyperball game
through thin silver interface cables dangling from  NST  sockets  in  the
back  of  his  shaven head. Green chrome cusps  implanted  over  his  eye
sockets reflecting the flashing score lights on the  hyperball  machine's
display.  Holding the pistol grip that aims the balls on the pinball-like
game, it's his neural inputs that fire the balls at the flashing targets.
Picking them out to a split second the way  cybernetic  smartguns  target
their victims.

 Cody tries not to stare at the machine. The speed at which  the  targets
are  pulsing  are  liable to give her a fit. She waits until the pony has
clocked the score display one final time and there are no  more  flashing
targets. The game won, she taps him on the shoulder.

 "Shouldn't you be out wasting people instead of wasting all your doru on
the machines, Echo?" she says with a smile.

 The pony looks around. She can see her face mirrored green in his  metal
eyes.  He  grins and pulls the cables out of his head. The machine slowly
reels them back into a slot on the side.

 "Jesus, Cody! I didn't know you were back."  He  grabs  her  around  the
waist  and  she  returns his hug. He stops when he realises he's pressing
her shoulder-rigged pistol into her ribcage.

 "Got back yesterday. Just thought I'd go see Reb first. Pay  the  bills,
that kinda thing."

 "Aces,"  Echo  says.  He  flicks  the  dust  covers back down on the NST
sockets and slides a pair of black shades over the  eyes.  Black  shades,
long  black  hair  shaved  at  the  sides,  black leather longcoat, black
leather jeans tucked into tall black boots. Like most of  the  population
of  the  Apres  Mort, Echo looks like Death incarnate. "So, how's life in
Callie?"

 "Dull," she says. "But  the  pay's  good.  Kinda  hard  trying  to  slow
yourself  down  to their speed, you know?" She shrugs. "So, what's new on
the Island?"

 Echo  laughs. "Things are still pretty fucked up. No one knows who's who
now the teams are gone. Kinda weird selling stuff from under the  counter
when  there's  no  stock  in the store." His green eyes stare blankly out
into the void of the Apres Mort. They seem to try  and  pick  people  out
from  the  haze  of  the  bar's  main  room.  It's as if, despite all the
electronics fitted under those metal cusps, he's blind as a bat. Or maybe
he's just lost in thought. Lost...

 He  shakes his head to shift the numbing daze. "Anyway... You never come
here for a social, so what do you need?"

 Cody reaches into the inside pocket of her leather to pull out  a  small
chip.  A  black  silicon cylinder the size of her thumbnail. She hands it
over to an inquisitive Echo.

 "I need to know where I can find more of these," she says.

 Echo turns over the chip. Recognises it as a neurosoft. Then raises  his
head  and  his  brow  wrinkles in thought. His stare seems to go straight
through her.

                * * *

Lycia wants to die.

 Not  with  a  bang.  By  any  means  necessary.  Sat  in a corner of her
apartment. Surrounded by a teenager's collection of knives  and  Japanese
swords.  Watching  each one glint with gut-wrenching invitation under her
single neon striplight.

 She shivers as her gooseflesh skin ripples with anticipation. Pale white
skin  that wants to be broken. Bright crimson life that wants to be free.
The hunger inside her all-consuming.  Every  thought  drawn  towards  her
death.

 And  the  Shape.  There. And there. Flittering in her mind like a crazed
moth. Wherever she looks. Whenever she tries to think. Concentrate.

 "This don't last," she says to the knives. "Ihor said  it  and  I  trust
him.  It  can't  last!" And with one final effort of will and motion, she
kicks a leg out at the shimmering hungry blades, spraying them across the
floorboards.

 Only  one  small  bullet-knife remains. Calling her. Teasing her. Daring
and pleading under the neon.

                * * *

Cody slides the door shut and steps into her tiny  apartment.  Two  rooms
and  a  shared bathroom on the fifteenth storey of a Loisada tower block.
Red Sector 5. The soles of her boots thumping over the  black  and  white
plastic  tiles  lining the floor. She slumps down into the single low-cut
red foam armchair. Drowns out the ambient mixture of downstairs  domestic
argument and next-door hick music by clicking on the TV.

 Local  news  about  the  latest  violence  uptown. Yet another borg gone
psycho  and  SWAT  called  in  with  their new Japanese hardsuits. Half a
building destroyed in the process.

 Cody laughs at the debris. Unsure whether she's laughing at the overkill
or the joy of being alive. Shaking her head as the story moves aside  for
commercials,  she  rummages  through  the  pockets of her jacket for some
whizz. There's one small blue derm left. She peels off  the  backing  and
presses it into her shoulder, breaking the seal.

 Echo didn't seem to know much. He'd heard of a  shipment  of  new  chips
coming in through the Terminal, maybe for computers or neuralware, but by
the time he'd decided to try and skim some of it,  it  had  already  gone
through. He gave her a few names for ponies that may have  been  selling,
but nothing definite.

 Cody  tried  the  Port Authorities, claiming to be part of a Civic audit
team, to try and look through the manifests, but they had found  her  out
as she was flicking through the Terminal net.

 As  much  as she hates the whole fucking idea, she  knows  there's  only
one avenue left open to her. She has to call Damon.

 But not now...

 Switching the channel, there's a Big Pierrot re-run from  a  series  she
must  have  missed.  Quietly,  she settles down to watch it as the lights
from a police aerodyne wash over the room from the round porthole  window
behind  her. Her heart slowing down to a regular thump. Her skin tingling
with soft waves of heat. Unconsciously chewing her bottom lip as the dark
avenger in the clown suit saves yet  another  innocent  victim  from  the
insane clutches of a bioroid madman.

                * * *

The smell destroys the nostrils. But she no longer senses that way.  Made
from  chrome  and part flesh, only her face expresses emotions in the way
of the meat. And then, not often.

 The sound of the machines in the background spins a low hum.  Soft  wind
through  air-cooled engineering. Sorting. Processing. Creating nirvana on
cylindrical silicon.

 She pulls herself from the machine. Tugging out the jacks from her metal
head.  Facing  the  real  world through a cybernetic monoptic system that
encases her now useless eye sockets. Seeing the basement  here  like  TV.
Hearing the hum through two multi-directional sensor booms that move like
the ears of a rabbit at  the  back  of  her  armoured  cranium.  Her  new
olfactory nerves filtering out the shit stench that plasters the walls of
the building. The legacy of her insane minions.

 When born, the body she occupies was once human. One  hundred  per  cent
meat. But the operations slowly took over. First the NST sockets allowing
her to utilise cybernetic machines. Then, after a run-in with a gang, new
metal  arms  and legs had to be fitted. Wary of the attention, she sought
out a back-street clinic here in New Atlantic City to complete  the  job.
With  chromed  body,  head  and  re -wired central nervous system. It was
costly, but now the body is better. Better than all the meat. Better than
anything. Better.

 But  the  memories  come  crashing  down  on  her like the night's rain.
Remembering the real self. That her body once belonged to  someone  else.
Her possession could never last long.

 The machine behind her begins to cycle. The massive chip burner  loading
in  a  new batch and starting afresh. A mini-production line for a stolen
neurosoft. Each one a little piece of personal  heaven.  Inside  her  own
cybernetic mask she smiles. She's going to make everyone better.

(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre
--
|   ^. .^  | Ridley McIntyre - [e-mail] | "The       deadliest |
|   ( @ )  | "I honestly think you ought to sit  down | bullshit is odorless |
|     ~    |  calmly, take a stress pill,  and  think | and     transparent" |
|  piglet  |  things over..."                         |     - William Gibson |