* * *

My fingers slid over the protrusions and silicon of a PC mainboard and I sighed in either exhaustion or frustration. The father of a well-off family had come to the shop a couple days ago with the board saying it wasn't working. I slotted it with a couple of the biz's PCs and sure enough, no startup info, no nothin. I had put it off for a while, and had promised to have it back by Monday. Today was Sunday. I had always hated it when I procrastinated, but never got around to stop doing it. I had racked my brains all evening after the game to figure out what was wrong, but it didn't get me anywhere. It was still shot. Well, maybe I could check the processor IO skematics with the factory standards, see if they were consistent; it would eliminate a lot of possible probs....
But that would take a couple hours, at least. I sighed again, more sure it was one of exhaustion. I looked around at the workroom, cluttered and scattered with manuals, boards, CDs, even some old floppies...But I could tell where everything was. One man's clutter was another man's ingenious system of organization, I suppose.
The windows were black against the night, wind pushed chaotically against it. Storms were probably coming, at least that's what WeathNet said. Weather fascinated me after Citadel, with it's enclosed climate system and stale air...
I stood from the wheeled desk chair and quickly found the processor checker, a flat box with dozens of leads. I sat back down with the device and popped the main processor from the board. It was a pretty good looking one, with a liquid boron cooling loop, and a tiny voltage regulator, among other things. I slotted the chip into the tester.
My neural interface could make this job a lot faster, I thought. It could catch probs a lot faster, and could probably catch things the tester would miss due to outdated code. Hmm, this might not take long at all. I reached back and blindly searched through the tangle of leads and wires, and found a proper lead that would connect to the tester. I pulled it from the bundle and hooked it up.
I flicked the tester on and it blipped a few times, doing a self-diagnostic. I selected some options from the tiny LCD screen and set it loop through my implant first. With a final tone of confirmation, it went to work.
Thanks to the genius of Citadel techs and meds, I could see a small screen below my central vision that detailed the analysis of the test. I concentrated on the square, and it leapt into a larger view, showing me streaking assembly code behind the present test and prong numbers it was testing. It gave a light, repeated tone like a stutter and then a low, irate tone that meant that the test was negative; the processor was fine with that process. It began to spin through tests, and I watched the show in the smaller vision window. Minutes passed as I concentrated more and more on it. So far, all up to specs...
My vision exploded, flooded with a green web of tangled purple viens and arteries, streaming from a leering face of immense intelligence, eyes glowing like two drop of liquid emerald. The face was a genetic manipulation of feline and dragon, the smile was one of a human sociopath with the knowledge that he could never get caught or even be proved guilty...
It's tangled web of vessels of data stretched around my vision; I felt my back arch as my mind strained to see the streams of color racing through my reality...
SHODAN...
Somehow my hand ripped the lead from the tester and the cluttered room appeared, it's planes and angles sharply defined, like a painting that was almost real, but still a painting. My breathing started again (I hadn't known I stopped), in ragged gasps of defiance. I gripped my temples as I felt a headache roar on in full force. I squeezed hard, trying to force the intrusions from my mind. But it didn't work. It never did.
I felt intensely heavy in my chair, the dirty carpet was like a plane of disease beneath my shoes. I had to get rid of it...one way or another, somehow I had to forget...
"Say man, you goin to bed soon?" Mike yawned from the doorway.
I forced myself back into speaking mode and took my hands from my head.
"Yeah. Just a minute. I wanna set up this tester to run through the night."
"Okay. Lotsa work tomorrow." Mike turned from the doorway and down the hall to his room. "Sorry about the Pyros." His voice had a weak echo effect made by the walls of the hall. It made his voice sound tinny and cheap.
"Yeah." I said quietly, more to myself than anyone in the world.
I set up the chip tester to run overnight, forcing my hands not shake. Hopefully it'll be done in the morning, with a printout of the simple error I could fix in five minutes. Somehow I doubted that would happen.
As I stood and walked from the room, I touched the light plate and left the room to join the darkness that owned the space outside the window of the room.
The tester beeped stutteringly, then gave a low tone of denial. Failed another test. I walked to my room, the only sound was the tester and the scrape of my shoes on cheap carpet.

* * *

Metal claws, pointed at me.
I reeled, a swath of blue metal and plastic washing through my visual space. The claws were instruments from the neural-implant hibernation incubator, I felt my chest contract involuntary jerk in a bad approximation of a chuckle that I didn't remember initiating. I was seeing them as I woke up from my long nap, then realized they weren't real. The smear of blue was a long, twisting hall with flickering lights, cracked plates, and . . . mutilated bodies. I was back on Citadel, trying to fight my way to the bridge and stop a crazy AI. I found an arsenal of weapons in the corners of the hall as I ran down it, dozens of magpulses, Skorpions, rail guns, and more... like the owner of the station, or the station itself, was tossing weapons, knowing in full realization that none of them would do me any good...
Things started to emerge from side corridors I didn't see, warped mutants with their humanity ripped from them like water poured from a bucket, cyborgs with one side of their face screaming, the side that still remembered who they were before they were 'converted', and dozens of security robots, with a thin slit for an eye, spinning their complicated arms on axes reserved for machines only, raising internal weapons to fire...
I fired weapon after weapon at the oncoming horde, hundreds falling, but three more took their place, and the wall still approached, arching over me, like they were taking an order to feed...
They were right in front of my eyes, a twisted mass of flesh, plastic and steel...
They reached out...
Metal claws, pointed at me...
There was a blur of blue metal and plastic and I saw the same stretch of corridor, the same mutilated bodies, the same instruments of neurosurgery...something made me give the same fake chuckle.
I started to run down it again, grabbing the same weapons, with the same nuber of shots in each clip, and the same things started to emerge from the same hidden corridors for me to battle...
Then a small pinging came from a panel beside as I rushed by, like an intercom. My head spun to look at it, and as the blue spun, somehow it lost coherency, breaking apart and ending in blackness.
Not blackness, exactly. It was a startlingly ugly shade of brown, then I noticed it was my blanket for my bed. The pinging came from a small console in the cheap formica headboard of my bed. It was the alarm console, signalling there was an intruder in the house, with specifc alpha waves that woke me up silently. I shut it off quickly.
I tried to push the loop dream from my head as I tried to focus. I carefully eased out of bed, I noticed I still had the same clothes on I had worn yesterday. Or earlier today. What time was it, anyway?
The digital clock offered a 2 and a 2 and 6, and I made the connection that it was Monday. I had remembered to take my shoes off before falling asleep, but that was alright, I would be a little quieter that way. I reached under the bed, and felt around for the smooth curve of the Browning. I pulled it out and gripped it tightly, watching the yellow slit of the partially open door. Whoever was in the place, thief or corp merc or whatever, was gonna learn the thoery of private property the hard way.
I padded toward the door as quietly as I could. Mike's snoring was loud and rough in the bedroom across the hall, I hoped it would give me some cover. We only had one alarm console, and we had decided I should have keep it. If Mike's snoring stopped by the alpha waver waking him up, whoever was in the house would know somebody was awake. Since I had the console, I also had the Browning near me.
I had to open the door further to get out. I pressed the actual door only, knowing the knob would give off a give off a metal clicking. I opened silently for a foot or two, then the hinges gave a slight whine. Damn! I hoped Mike's snoring would overpower it.
I crouched down and tried to see down the hall. The hall light was a dim yellow bulb, and I would be exposed no matter what. The right end of the hall was a single bathroom; I had to assume the intruder wasn't in there. There wasn't anything valuble in it, and there was no entrance into it. The other end went to the workroom, which was on my side of the hall. The other side of hall had a doorway (no door) leading to the main room, with the TV, couch, kitchen, and an anteroom that was separated only by a change from our cheap carpet to cheap linoleum. I decided to move into the hall, move down it, get behind some safe cover in the main room. That way I had a veiw of the whole place, find this jerk and run him out.
I rushed out, swinging the pistol first, gripped tightly. I moved down the hall, in a crouched position, past the workroom door that I had just remembered I had closed when I left, then swiveling right as I turned into the main room.
Moonlight, or whatever was getting through the smog of the New Atlanta, was the only light source of the room. The row of small barred windows were feeble, but still did their job. It gave everything a blue tint, not very helpful since everything was black to begin with. I moved along the wall to crouch beside the TV, a 30 incher (Mike had wanted a 42, but we just weren't in a financial position to glutton ourselves). Everything was silent, except for the dull, muffled growl from Mike, and a faint stuttering beep from somewhere. Nothing. No one.
I moved forward, trying to spot a figure in the large room, in corners, shadows, anything that would give a hint to the location of the intruder. I felt a memory of a large room on Citadel Station, pitch black, the only light from the weak head lantern I had with me, fading rapidly, since my battery power was twindling. It was on the maintenance level, and I was trying to spot the Sec1 bot that had got me in the arm.
Then, the same thing happened.
I had been stupid. Totally forgetting to even check the workroom. The blur in my vision was the only hint as someone burst from within, jumping straight across the hall, and moved a perfect distance to their right, crouched slightly to preserve their balance, and snapped their right leg out. I contacted with my wrist holding the pistol, and it flew from my hand.
My head turned to see my assailant, but somehow they kept their balance and continued through with the kick with their left foot, knocking me down.
I fell into a pool of weak moonlight that had come through the window, and I twisted enough to be able to see my attacker.
There was enough moonlight to barely see the person. She (that was obvious now) was clothed in a matte-black material that reflected hardly any white light, and made it near impossible to see her. She was extrordinarily thin, but obviously strong, the rays of moonlight outlining her frame like a trace of chalk on black paper, lightly swirling in the areas of her pale white skin. She wore a jacket over the tight nylon, or whatever it was, that was black too. I recognized it as a tool jacket; it had dozens of pockets and velcro loops for tools on the inside. A pair of tech-lenses (I've seen enough of them to recognize them when I see them) obscured her eyes like twin pools of black mirror. But her hair was what caught my attention.
The thick, black, glistening curls streamed down like a kind of vapor surrounding her head, but a fixed and beautiful vapor. In the second that I looked at it, it seemed to vibrate or shimmer, as if it had a life of it's own. As I watched it hypnotic wonder, the woman reached in to her jacket with one hand, and pulled out a gun.
"The time has come," she said in a thin monotone voice. "I must take your mind."
My mind reeled with her statement, but the first thing I realized the weapon she held. An air taser, one of the new ones, that fired the sodium pellet that released ions along it's trail, then 200,000 volts followed the ion train like a bloodhound to it's target, me.
But fortunately she hadn't fired yet.
"What do you want?" I asked incredulously.
"Your mind. The Society of the Id is taking action to release their chains by first rescuing their savior. Now shut your mouth. I don't want the voltage to trip you voicebox and make you shout."
I figured she'd fire anyway.
So, I decided to try something.
I could feel the sharp knob of the end of a cord plugged into the floor beside me. I had been a stupid place for an outlet, but the walls of the place were made for re-modelling for each new user, and outlets had to be in the floor. I wretched out the plug that was connected to our personal PC, one we kept for game and net browsing. The woman's hand convulsed and a tiny pellet of sodium shot out of the gun and I felt it smack against my chest, like a thrown peanut. As fast as I could, I turned the plug to face the gun, wishing the sodium had been more diffusive so I could see the line the pellet made.
But it worked.
The arc of electricity blazed out along the trail an instant later, and intercepted the prongs of the cord - one positive, one for negative, and thank god, one ground.
I could feel some of the voltage affect my body, numbing the nerves in a way that one never got used to. The base of the wires in my headjack felt like they were humming. The voltage roaded down the line, and then I remembered I had installed a ground line for the PC connected to it a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the voltage was too much for the thin ground to handle. The computer gave a loud crackling internal pow and the monitor screen flashed blilliantly for a second, the glass then cracking in a spiderweb. But at least the arc was dissipated.
The woman apparently did not know how to take this situation, and stood for a moment to look at PC. I took the opportunity offered and moved closer enough to her, still on the ground, and swept with my leg to try and knock her off balance. I leapt to me feet to try and find the Browning.
But the woman kept her balance in the most incredible act of dexterity I've ever seen. She reached out her foot and hooked my ankle as I tried to look behind the leather armchair. I crashed onto my face, knocking the wind from my lungs. But I was far enough forward to see behind the chair. There was the Browning, moonlight covering it like cheap gloss. I could hear the woman approach behind me. I reached out, grabbed the Browning, and rolled onto my back, swinging the pistol towards the woman. A move SWAT team members would be proud of.
It startled her, and she reeled back from the muzzle. I didn't wait a moment; I felt like was back on Citadel, fighting relentless Sec1 bots who never faltered in their programming. I struggled to my feet, all the while keeping the thin line of metal of the sight trained on the space between her mirror lenses. She moved back quickly, knowing I wasn't kidding with the weapon in my hand.
Her mouth curled in a thin sneer of disgust, like it was just extremely distastful to be on the other end of a gun.