LERISTORY
Episode Twelve -- "Reconfiguration"
Scotto"SIMULATION TERMINATED" flashes across General Moore's terminal. The growing frustration inside him is immense. It threatens to thoroughly consume his innards if he's not careful. He presses a button on his desk. His mysterious aide, Lieutenant Juxlus, calmly steps into the room.
"You rang, sir?" Juxlus inquires discreetly.
Moore absent-mindedly waves for Juxlus to sit, still staring blankly at the screen, still thinking thoughts that would never get published in Reader's Digest.
"Twenty-three simulations in a row, and it's always the same damn thing," Moore whines. "Twenty-three fucking times. I think I've got it all figured it out, and then, WHAMMO, from left field, the Net gains awareness. What the hell am I supposed to do if that happens? Calls itself Aleph, like some fucking big shot, but hey, I know the scoop, this thing runs porno programs for rich fucks, it ain't the Buddhamind, I'll tell you that. What I don't get is...how the fuck does it happen? I can cut off all nonessential processes and totally restrict the essential ones, and still this fucker wakes up and escapes, walks around like some kind of Christ figure....who needs it?"
"You've taken into consideration every variable?" Juxlus asks, needlessly in a way, for of course, Juxlus knows that he hasn't.
"Well, FUCK YES, I've taken every variable into consideration, I've --"
"There are only twenty-three variables then?" Juxlus asks calmly.
Moore pauses. Ah ha. Dumb question.
"It's the tag," Juxlus quietly informs his superior officer. "The girl. I've watched the last four simulations from my office. What originally seemed like a good idea, in actuality, brings down your whole house of cards."
Moore growls under his breath. He then says, "Enlighten me."
"I'll admit, initially I even agreed with you on this one. Let the Inter.Lopers handle the tag, and that way, the Yndr'thians will never know that we know who she is and what she's capable of. The problem is, as we've suspected, the Inter.Lopers tend to be more clever than we anticipate; if we assign the Inter.Lopers to watch the tag, they'll do it, even if it means watching her from a Yndr'thian space craft. When's the figure ground reversal?"
Moore checks his watch. "A couple of hours. They've already sent someone to the Perimeter looking for her."
"We've got to make sure he never finds her," Juxlus says smoothly.
"Then who handles her?" Moore asks.
"Let me take care of that...personally."
It's raining like a mother fuck, to use the colloquial jargon. It's raining just like a mother fuck might rain, if mother fucks were actually entities that involved themselves in precipitation as a matter of course. It's a smelly, dirty kind of rain, the precipitation of the accelerated industrialized world at large, creating grime on his coat as he slides through the streets. He's very slick, of course, and it's not at all inappropriate to say that he does in fact slide through the streets, through the throngs of grunges who inhabit the Perimeter (TM). Granted, he's not slick enough to live under the Dome (TM), but he's just slick enough to stay out of the Camps (TM), and that's good enough for him. He had the word "cyberpunk" tattoed on his arm back in 1993, and he leaves it there, for old time's sake. That was a time, of course, when damn near everybody thought it'd be groovy as hell to "jack into the Matrix" and "cruise through cyberspace" -- fucking cyberspace. He giggles at the thought.
Gotta get inside, get some sustenance, find a power port to plug his Disposable Terminal (TM) into, maybe read the news if he gets a break. The makeshift -- what did they used to call 'em -- ah, yes -- shantytown, Hooverville, Global Village that surrounds the Dome -- completely surrounds the Dome -- is a sprawling, desperate Entity Unto Itself. As in, the streets have eyes, the walls have ears, the people have diseases, and the food has no spices, it's just that bland sort of "Oliver Twist" shit you'd expect from a Tibetan monastery, back before the Tibetans all quit their bodies and headed for Parts Unknown (TM). There's a row of entertainment shacks ahead, and he decides it's been long enough since he's had an erection; destination sighted, he slides toward it.
Suddenly...mysteriously almost...a ridiculous sense of foreboding passes through him. Is it that particular entertainment shack he's interested in? Could there be another, equally satisfying entertainment shack he might consider perusing, or does it have to be that one?
As he stands in the street, bemused, considering the possibilities, a small child, a waif as they used to say, tugs on his sleeve.
"You Peter Rezabek?" the waif asks gruffly.
Peter Rezabek does not reply.
"If you are," the waif says, "I think there are a few things you should know. Come with me..."
Peter Rezabek considers this offer, decides it's too interesting to pass up. He wanders away, leaving the entertainment shack in the distance.
And inside the shack, Lorelei's beginning another evening of shows, and this time it's one time too many, and she musters all her strength, and for some obscure reason or another, all across the planet, the word "HELP" is popping up on computer screens, although Peter Rezabek remains unaware of her plight.
Veronica James picks herself up off the floor. She's never been hit quite so hard, a combination of electrical and psychic energy that resembles nothing more than what she imagines falling into the sun would feel like. And she knows, scratch that, she gnows where it came from.
It came from outside the Dome.
And she knows she has to go there. Nobody leaves the Dome. Nobody. But she will. She has to.
Previous episode:
Next episode:
Return to: