zONE: The End and the Beginning

zONE

The end and the beginning

by

Philip F. Blood

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Version 3.55

PUBLISHED BY:

Philip Blood on Smashwords

zONE: The End and the Beginning

Copyright © 2014 by Philip Blood

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Dedication

I’d like to start by thanking all the authors, directors, writers, and artists of any kind who have touched my heart through their artistry. Your works are what set humans apart from any other living thing and this book is dedicated to your genius. I’d also like to thank my wife, Marianne Rose Bridget Elizabeth Wilhelm, who represents a good portion of the women in this novel and captures all of my heart.

* * * * *

zONE

The end and the beginning

Chapter zOne – Holgren Hospital

Is there a reason why hospitals use so much of the color white? Perhaps bleach makes it easier to hide the bloodstains. I looked at the white sheets around me and wondered what bloody stories are hidden from sight.

It is funny what the mind will focus on; a moment ago, there had been only me and then the sheets around me, a bed, and now a room. I am alone. I don't know how or why I am here.

I turned my head and inspected the torture devices around me. My bed is festooned with wires, tubes, mechanical arms, motors, racks, and various flashing electronic gizmos. Fortunately, most of Dr. Frankenstein's modern gadgetry isn’t attached to me, though I do have two wires stuck to my temples and some kind of white plastic clamp device attached to my index finger. Then a memory surfaced, it was like tasting that word that has been on the tip of your tongue, too long. I am in Holgren Private Hospital, located in Barstow, in the state of California, along the route toward Las Vegas, but I still can’t recall why.

You see, coming out of anesthesia is not like waking up from sleep; you come from nothing, without any sense of having dreamed. You become aware of sound and then the dark void retreats. It's very confusing. I don’t know, for sure, that I had been anesthetized, but the mode of my waking hints toward that conclusion. I have a distinct feeling that I know, but it is just beyond my reach, like when you're so nervous at a job interview that you suddenly can't remember the answer to a simple question.

I decided to take stock inside the old gray matter to see what I can glean before I press the nasty looking red button on the end of the cord next to my hand. No doubt, the button will summon someone, but I think I better ask myself some questions, before getting some unknown person involved.

I started simply, trying to summon my name. Fortunately, a name came without much effort, Professor Thorten C. Hamilton. I also know that friends called me TC. Well, that rules out amnesia, at least total amnesia, anyway. Since I know where I am, it makes sense that I had been aware when I arrived at this hospital, but I can’t, for the life of me, recall the details. Strangely, I know little of my personal history, but I know details about the hospital. This is a small, but expensive, facility for the wealthy and well-to-do. I don’t know if I am well-to-do or not.

So why am I here? What is the emergency and why am I in a hospital bed of a private, and prohibitively expensive, goop kitchen?

Holgren is known for its gene recipes. Want a new nose? No worry! Going under the scalpel has gone the way of bloodletting. Nowadays, your genes are mapped like a sheet of music; a new mix is cooked up into a gel, which is smeared onto a spot on your body. A few weeks later, your genes alter to the new design. Once your genes are rearranged your body is forced to re-grow to match. Among the mix are specially engineered nanobots, which attack and break down the old cell structures so that the new cells can grow, according to your new gene recipe. There is a stage of decay, interlaced with accelerated healing, as the new gene code takes effect. You might look like you are recovering from a train wreck, but, in a few days, you heal and your old hooknose alters into something small and dainty, or vice versa if that is your wish.

It all began when we mapped the human genome. The genie's bottle was open and now anyone can have their wish granted to be beautiful, or different, or in the case of criminals, just someone else. But goop isn’t cheap and brain alterations are illegal. Any gene alteration requires legal registration with before-and-after pictures, fingerprints, DNA graphs, brain scans, and retinal images.

Most importantly, any alteration to the brain is prohibited. That means no super genius recipes or other mind-altering modifiers, nothing that changes your brainwave patterns. zPol has deemed that your brain patterns are what define you; they represent who you are and how you are identified. They are registered at birth and identify you, throughout your life. So, changing your brain is highly illegal and dangerous, but even so, brain goop does exist.

We all know that there are people who will try just about anything; they'll risk their sanity to get smarter than the next guy. Of course, special permission can be awarded to fix some mental disorders, like paranoia; speaking of which, I am stoking the fire on some of that, right this moment. But the risk to most brain alterations is severe; will you be who you were before your mind was altered? Or, are you killing yourself to give birth to a new person? Besides, if zPol catches you, then you will have to give up all rights to liberty and life, which means your body is donated to the Zombies. Even so, there are those willing to risk everything to become something more.

Finding a place to brew legal goo isn’t all that difficult. The advent of zTime monetization hasn't altered the old adage that money makes the world go round. The old saying of ‘time is money’ is literally true now. There are those who will take your zTime and cook up your recipe. There are even a few unscrupulous types, where, if you are rich enough in zTime, dumb, or desperate enough to want to smear yourself with brain altering goop, they’ll cook you up a batch. Assuming you aren’t driven insane by the process, and can still function, you are now outside of society. If you undergo one brain scan, that identifies an unregistered mind pattern, zPol will be on your ass like stink on fish. That means you also have to have enough money to bribe someone, pretty high up, to enter your new brain pattern into the system as a legal scan. Good luck with that, Rockefeller.

So, here I am, in a private goop kitchen, with parts of my mind blinky at best. The question of the moment is… had I been stupid enough to take a brain smear? Is that my problem? From what I know of Holgren, this is not the kind of place that will risk making up brain goop. They are strictly new boobs, bigger bats, and longer life. Those kinds of mods are expensive, but they are legal remedies, available to those with the means to pay.

I know my name, but I couldn't pick my own face from a police lineup. There is a stainless-steel pan on the table next to me, so, I picked it up and looked at my reflection. I am a mix of Wasp and American Indian, with a hint of Asian in my black hair and bone structure; a real mutt. In my humble opinion, I am neither handsome nor ugly.

I know that I am twenty-eight. I checked under the covers and see that I am slightly out of shape like I quit getting enough exercise, but only a few years ago. Not that I can recall any details of how I got that way. There are holes in my memory that you could pilot a flyer through.

Having finished my body inspection, I thought about my life. I know I am a code sculptor, freelance at the moment, which really just means I am eking out a living from the shadowy corners of the system. I am a rat in the walls, sneaking around the big Zcerebral Inc. structure and snatching scraps, where I can, to survive. I know I have a rep in the Zones and something more, which I can’t remember at the moment. That bothers me. I am definitely missing a few lug nuts from my wheels. That, coupled with the fact that I can’t remember why I am here, made me reach for that nasty red button by my hand. I hope it will summon someone with answers.

Before I could press the button, I noticed movement to my right. When I turned my head, I spotted a young girl sitting in the guest chair, she is watching me. Upon seeing my head turn, she stood up. She is cute, in a small and, decidedly, un-super model way. At the moment, she has a Princess Leia scowl on her face. She looks like she is in her twenties, somewhere, but age is subjective, nowadays.

She spared a worried glance at the open door into the hall, obviously checking to see if anyone is near and then said, I’ve done as you requested, Professor. I don’t know what game you’re playing, or why you wanted me to put a Skey on you while you were out, but against my better judgment, I did as you asked. If you ask me, you’re crazy to do that here.

What do you mean? I asked, and tried to remember her, and then a name surfaced, ‘Ellie’. It was a small triumph, but something has punched holes through my memory with a powerful laser.

Ellie shook her head, causing her short brown hair to move back and forth in interesting ways. I smiled, so she scowled and quickly moved to the side of the bed.

She offered one warning. If they catch you with that Skey, and capture you alive, they will brain vacuum you and likely find me as well. Then they will take both our bodies, so be careful.

Abruptly, she turned and headed for the door.

Wait! Where can I find you again? I asked, still trying to make time, it's a male thing.

Pandora, Ellie answered, in an exasperated voice.

I got a flash of memory and remembered a big blue girl, very thin, with huge eyes; she was running through the trees of a blue and purple forest.

Where is that?

She stopped by the door and turned, her head tilted in a puzzled way, Really? Pandora… in the Cameron Zone? We spent some time there, remember? I showed you around The People. she said in a way that meant I should already know. You haven’t forgotten the Zones, have you?

And the way she said it, I knew she thought it was a joke like nothing could make me forget the Zones.

Then she added, Look, Professor, we don’t have time to chat. Word in the Zones says that somebody tipped the Dragoons about a big Freebooter getting a new look and they mentioned Holgren. The Zombies may be here at any moment. My Steward has been monitoring the zNews and zPol chatter and they are coming. If I were you, I’d get out of here, now. Meet me in the Zones. Look for me in the northern forest village of The People; I’m typically there on Mondays and Wednesdays.

She turned to go and I said, Wait, is there anything else you can tell me about why I’m here?

The girl frowned, again, and then said, Yes, I almost forgot, you instructed me to tell you NOT to take that Skey off and you were very serious about it.

Then the cute girl was abruptly gone like she had never been there. I reached back to an itch on my neck and felt something attached. It is in the outline of a small war hammer. It is about the thickness of a quarter and about the diameter of a fifty-cent piece. I thought about prying it off, but then I realized that this is probably the Skey the girl had mentioned. Besides, it is really stuck to my skin.

I decided to leave the Skey, for the moment, and consider something else that the mysterious girl had said. She mentioned that the 'Zombies' are on their way.

Like a bubble reaching the surface of my mind, a memory surfaced. Zombies are criminals whose bodies are under the control of zPol operatives. In this day and age, the idea of walled prisons is long gone; the only prison is your own body. When you are convicted of a crime you are sentenced to community service. That means you lose the use of your body for the length of your sentence.

They attach a Remora device to the base of your neck, which disconnects your mind from your body, like an interrupt. No signals from your mind can get past to your body. They store your body in a Zombie Coffin, where it stands, dormant, until a zPol host rider creates a Satweb link from their mind, up in the Zones, to the Remora. They are then in control of your body, which is used for government service.

People, with their mind disconnected, and a host rider linked, are called ‘Zombies’. As long as the Remora device is attached, the zPol operative’s mind is in control and the host mind is unaware of what happens. If their body is hurt or killed, time is removed from their sentence as a debt paid to society. Of course, death means that their debt is paid in full, mere maiming and wounding carry standard time reductions. Removal of the Remora device, while a rider is in control, kills the host body. They built the system this way to keep anyone from reinstating the host mind by simply removing the Remora.

It is important to note that a mind is not actually taken from one body and put into the brain of another body, this is an illusion. The original mind is still in the body, but the Remora just overrides control, allowing the mind, linked from the Zones to the Remora, to control the body, like a second brain, while the other is dormant and unaware.

The abrupt return of knowledge about Zombies made me remember my earlier paranoia, what if I had paid to get a brain smear? What if the holes in my memory, which sometimes return in chunks, are symptoms of gene alteration to my brain? If the Zombies are on their way here, looking for this 'Freebooter' that the girl had mentioned, and they brain scan me, they might discover that my mind patterns have been altered. I realize, at that point, zPol will put my body into a Zombie Coffin for the rest of my natural life.

Time to go.

The problem is, I don't really know why I am here. It is entirely possible that my spotty memory has nothing to do with brain goop. I could have had a simple accident and hit my head, or any number of other explanations. I did a quick survey for bandages, sore spots, or any other obvious wounds. I found a slight tenderness at the base of my skull, where the spine connects. Well, a blow, or operation, would explain my sketchy memory. However, nothing seems too painful and I am fully mobile.

I got out of bed and tested my legs, they are good to go. Finding clothes is the next problem. They have me in one of those hospital gowns, the ones designed to give all the nurses a good look at your butt as you stroll down the hallways.

I searched the closet and found some clothes that I can’t recall but fit me so well I figure they must be mine.

All this time, I kept the wires connected to my temple and finger and pulled the device they are connected to around with me on its wheeled base. I dressed in three minutes and was ready to slip out. My clothes didn't contain a wallet, but of course, most people don’t carry one anymore. Nowadays, a brain scan will get me access to buy goods and services, assuming I have zTime on account.

I got ready to unplug the wires connected to my temples, I figure, once I disconnect, it is going to cause havoc. No doubt, their monitoring devices will start screaming, like a banshee, and alert the nurses. I checked the hall and found it clear, for the moment, so, I unclipped my finger and quickly peeled off the wires from my head.

They must have been tied into my brain, in some fashion, because, the moment I pulled the wires free, the world blurred and I staggered, nearly losing consciousness. After a moment, my vision cleared and I seem OK, so I started out into the hallway. That’s when I heard footsteps coming from around the nearby corner, lots of them, and not the dainty sound of hospital nurse shoes. These sound like boots and that doesn’t bode well. I tiptoed across the hall, quickly, trying not to make noise. Have you ever tried that in an echoing hallway? It isn't easy and I probably looked like a novice fire walker attempting his first stroll over hot coals on bare feet. Fortunately, no one was there to see and I made it inside the room, across the hall, before the approaching people came into sight. The room is occupied by an old gentleman, who is quietly snoring.

From the hall, I heard a male voice speak in a subservient manner. The patient you are looking for is in room 12, right here.

I have no idea if my old room number is twelve, or if that is the room in which I am hiding. The first will mean that they are looking for me; the second means I am about to be embarrassed when they come in and find me standing by the bed of this sleeping geezer.

This room is unoccupied, a rough male voice accused.

I peeked out through the crack in the door jam and saw a nervous looking orderly. He answered the man with the rough voice, But... I'm sure this is his room. Thorten C. Hamilton, yes, room 12, he added, looking at an electronic wrist pad.

The man he spoke to is just out of my sight through the door jam. His gruff voice sounds disgusted. He's escaped.

I'm sorry, Sir, he was just a patient, no one was set to watch him, the other voice said in a whiny fashion. If you don't mind my asking, what does zPol want with him anyway?

zPol's business is not your concern.

The orderly coughed and dropped his eyes. Of course, sorry.

The zPol operative continued. We've accessed your patient records and they show he was scheduled for his second gene alteration in two hours, this one for body modifications, all told, he was getting a full spread.

I'm sure it was all legally registered.

So, it seems. Is it common practice to have your patients in a hospital bed for a smear series?

The orderly answered hesitantly, Not usually, Sir. As you know, a gene smear rarely requires anyone to stay in the hospital. However, if he was getting a full spread, for major body alterations, his physician might have scheduled him to stay for a few days.

Where is the registered image of his first smear?

The orderly looked puzzled as he scrolled through various screens and then finally replied. It should be in here, maybe it just hasn’t been logged yet.

So, we won’t know WHAT that change will look like? the officer said in a deadly voice.

It’s just a mix-up, Sir, I’m sure we can straighten it out, the orderly said in a terrified voice.

In my business, we don't believe in mix-ups. Any aberration in the system is more likely the manipulation of a Pirate and I’ll BET we find a Pirate wake through your code base. A full spread is extremely expensive, he suddenly stated.

The orderly nodded and said, And rare.

How was this patient affording such treatment?

The orderly answered apologetically, I wouldn't know that, Sir.

Where is the patient's physician?

I believe that Dr. Burden is connected to his weekly golf game.

Take me to him, now, the Zombie stated, curtly.

The orderly looked apprehensive, but he nodded. You don’t argue with the Zombies.

I heard them turn and start walking away toward the nurse’s station. This is one of those moments in life where the curious part of you wins the internal struggle. A part of me is screaming inside, telling me not to look, but I cracked open the door and risked a glance at the back of the zPol officer and his six Zombie squad. Sure enough, there is a red, hourglass-shaped, flat attachment on all of the Zombie’s necks, including the officer’s; Remoras. They are Zombies all right, from the Black Widow squadron. I closed the door, softly.

It is very frustrating, I know details, like the hourglass Remora and its significance, but there are whole areas that draw a complete blank. First things first, I need to get out of here and lay low. If I am this 'Freebooter' that the Zombies are hunting, I have to escape or… what?

Pirates and Hackers, they are something I do know about. Freebooters are the popular Lords of the Zones, phantoms of the underworld, and sailors on the Zone seas. Popular myth has built them up to demigod status. They are the Robin Hoods of the time, Zoros of the resistance, and Skywalkers to the downtrodden plodders under the ethereal thumb of Zcerebral. ‘Freebooter’ is the general term for Hacker or Pirate. They are the only beings on the planet who have stood up to the new regime and lived to talk about it. They walk within the beast and live to tell the tale.

But I know better. Most Freebooters are far from the altruistic champions of right, perpetuated by popular myth. In truth, they are just the bats in the belfry. Criminals and wannabes who manage to hide among the workings of the machine and take advantage of loopholes and sloppy code. They spend their life avoiding the Dragoons in the Zones and the Zombies in the real world. And, contrary to myth, it is the rare Freebooter who is not eventually caught by the Dragoons and traced to the location of their true body, which is then sentenced to the living death of life imprisonment as a body for the Zombies. But still, there are a few who are a rung above the others and it is the antics of that small percentage that drives the world to elevate Pirates onto their pedestals of glory, they are the swashbucklers of the Zones.

I have also just had a smear, so I will be changing soon, but I don’t have time to sort it all out, not while I am hiding in a hospital, with Zombies hunting me. I have to get to a safe place to try and figure this all out. I need time so I can make sense of my splotchy memories, and a place to heal my mind while I wait for the change to overcome my body.

I need a fast ticket out of here. The first plan that I thought of was so obvious, so cliché, that I knew I couldn't use it. An ambulance leaving a hospital is the first place the Zombies will search for an escapee.

I need a little less obvious escape route.

The next idea, which came to mind, is dangerous, foolhardy, and might get my body donated. On the other hand, it is so foolish that the Zombies will never think to check.

‘Nothing risked, nothing gained’ is the old saying.

I made my way to the rear of the hospital, carefully. This doesn’t mean sneaking from doorway to doorway. I picked up a balloon and fruit basket from one of the sleeping patients; I figure it is more useful in saving my life than decorating his room. Then I walked, like I have somewhere to go, looking for a room number all the way. I even asked a nurse for directions; keeping the balloon between my face and the Zombie I saw walking down a nearby hallway, searching patient rooms.

When I turned a corner, and saw one of the back doors, leading out, I put the basket and balloon on a nearby table and opened the door a crack. Out at the exit from the parking lot, I can see some Zombies searching departing cars and questioning their drivers. There is an empty Zombie flyer about twenty yards away. It has the red hourglass symbol on it, so it, likely, belongs to the Zombie officer who questioned the orderly outside my old room.

When the Zombies at the gate looked away, I slipped out and made my way, quickly, to the Zombie flyer. It only took me a moment to get inside because it isn’t locked. Nobody wants to get INTO a Zombie flyer. There is plenty of room in back to conceal me from casual sight; these things are made to carry a lot of agents, or a lot of equipment, sometimes both, though there is little chance an officer will have men in his flyer.

I stayed there, for two hours, but, finally, I felt the vehicle bob a little, as someone got in. The engine revved up, a moment later, and I felt the stomach-churning motion of the ground effect field taking force. Then, my body felt the g-forces of a vertical liftoff.

Fifteen, terse, minutes later, we landed somewhere and the vehicle settled back onto the ground, before being shut down. I waited ten minutes after the officer got out before I took a peek.

I am in a Zombie parking lot. There are about twelve flyers parked here and the Zombie Coffin depository is off to the north. I am in some desert foothills, but there is a little good news, a major road is just a few hundred yards away. I can see some ground cars passing, occasionally, driving along, what has to be, the sparsely used Interstate 15. They are tourists, on a lark, using the old road to drive the nostalgic way to Vegas. Of course, they aren’t driving gas cars, those had been declared illegal, years ago. These are ground skimmers, hovercraft, using repulsion tech. Out in the center of the old road, I saw a silver blur go by as the old Mag Train silently cut through the desert air.

It took me a few minutes to get away, I had to make sure none of the Zombies came out and saw me near their aircraft. But, the fact is, no one is looking for an escaped criminal. This isn’t a lock-up facility, just an old prison, turned into a Coffin depository, where Zombie bodies are stored.

No one has ever escaped from a Zombie depository; it just isn’t conceivable; their original brains are disconnected from their bodies by an attached Remora.

A few minutes later, I reached the casino along the road. All, except one, have shut down since the Mag Train doesn’t stop between the Etiwanda station and Vegas. Still, there is just enough nostalgia traffic to keep one small place running. I considered my next move, it is obvious that I need to get lost in a big city; Las Vegas seems like the obvious choice, as it is nearby.

I walked down to the casino parking lot and managed to convince some tourists that I am a card dealer headed for a new job at the Jungle Palace. They offered me a ride to Vegas, so they could pump me for gambling tips. I obliged them, all the way, spouting 'systems' and explaining all the odds. It was easy; I found I knew the odds of every game in every situation. It bothers me that I don’t know why.

They left me at the front entrance of the Jungle Palace. It is the perfect depiction of an old Indian palace of legend, right down to the overgrown jungle, real looking hologram Bengal tigers, and Orangutans which play along the outside of the structure. You expect to see Mowgli hanging off one of the pyramids or towers. Actually, now that I think about it, I believe they actually have some cheesy Zone show here, where you play the parts of the animals in Rudyard Kipling’s classic, The Jungle Book.

It is decision time. Being broke, and in Las Vegas, is like being male, in a lesbian chat Zone, there's pretty stuff everywhere, except, you can't have any of it. I could use any public brain scanner around and if I have the zTime I can buy anything, but I am wanted by zPol. They will, definitely, be monitoring my account, assuming they haven’t crashed it already. If I use a brain scanner, they will know I am in Las Vegas, faster than zTime ticks away in the Zones. I can also look for an illegal zTime Trader and get a private brain scan to access my zTime, without a zPol flag, but they will charge me more zTime than the zTime I withdraw. Still, I may have to consider that option.

I reached up to scratch the itch at the back of my neck and touched the thin device attached to my skin, the one which Ellie had said she’d put there, she called it a ‘Skey’, said like the old winter sport where you would ski down a mountain. As soon as I thought about the Skey, another memory returned, like a new cotton ball tossed into the jar. I suddenly knew what it is, a spine key; an uplink to the Satweb.

These look similar to Remoras; they are also placed at the base of the skull. But a Skey does the opposite of a Remora. A Skey is used to send a copy of the person’s mind up to the Satweb. From there, a mind in the Zones can be linked to a Remora, attached to some poor sap’s neck, allowing the other mind to take control of that person’s body.

That was the original purpose, but Hackers found a different use for a Skey. They used a Skey to get a copy of their mind into the Zones, illegally, through the Satweb. Most people get onto the Zones using a standard Zone Interface, which was created by Zcerebral. This interface taps straight into the mind and reroutes perceptions, sensations, and motor control up and down from the Satweb. It connects a person to a virtual body, called a puppet. When you disconnect from the Zones or your puppet gets ‘zonked’, your mind is still in your real body, so you just wake up.

A Skey is a different animal altogether. When you put a Skey at the base of your skull, and will the connection, it starts sending an actual copy of your mind up through the Satweb to the Zone servers. Skeys are designed so that if they are removed from the Host, while connected, the copy will erase, automatically, from the Satweb, restoring consciousness to the host body. This is to keep anyone from making multiple copies, of the same person, with multiple Skeys. It also means that an agent’s mind, linked to a Remora, will not be lost if the Remora is removed, or the body killed; their real mind is still back in their body. The fact is, a mind is never in a Skey or a Remora, they are just used to transfer, or link, a mind to the Zone servers.

Skeys were appropriated by the Hacker community and are now used as a very portable means for a Hacker to illegally access the Zones, without a Zcerebral Interface, and without being under the control of the Zcerebral system.

To help with this complex operation, each hacker writes a program to assist them, called a Steward. This program is stored in the Skey.

If the Skey, attached to the back of my neck, connects my mind to a Steward program, then help is only a thought away. How much help the Steward will be all depends on my, unknown, skills as a Pirate and a code sculptor. After all, I must have sculpted the code that is my Steward. I know I have some kind of reputation and I know that zPol is looking for me, most likely because I am a Freebooter, or, possibly, even a Pirate.

The term ‘Freebooter’ first started up, as most things do, as a much simpler thing. It just meant you were booting into the Zcerebral servers for free, without zTime being taken from your account for each minute you spent in the Zones. That got combined to the term Freebooter, which also happens to be another name for a pirate. Soon, ‘Pirate’ became the common term for the best of the Freebooters.

I decided it is time to find out if I really am a Pirate, or only a Hacker, or even just a Landlubber with delusions of grandeur. Anyone, with the zTime, and willingness to break the law, may attempt to be a Hacker. All it takes is a Skey; and though VERY hard to come by, extremely expensive, and prohibitively illegal, you can obtain one, if that is your, in most cases, foolish desire. Most people who attempt to hack into the Zones are caught and even those who make it still aren’t considered Pirates. They have to do something which makes them famous and they have to find Tortuga.

All this just came to me, and I know Tortuga is some secret and illegal Zone.

I need a secure place where I can try using the Skey without being noticed. A hotel room is a good idea, but that is for people with zTime to spend. A Skey is serious business. When I say illegal, I mean ILLEGAL, as in using one carries a permanent Body Donation, as a penalty; that’s the permanent loss of your body, mind you, what they used to call capital punishment. Bleeding hearts are quick to point out that this isn’t capital punishment because your body is not killed. Your living husk is donated to the Zombies, so your body isn’t really dead, per se, but a Body Donation is the same as death, to me, my mind would be forever locked away while my body is used by Zcerebral agents. Based on this, I think it best to try the Skey in a secure location.

As I glanced around, thinking about where to find a secluded place, my eyes tracked over a show sign featuring Mowgli and Baloo the Bear, from The Jungle Book. That gave me an idea.

I followed the signs through the casino to The Jungle Book show. Of course, the signs lead you through a deep, dark, and utterly maze-like, casino floor, where you get so lost that it could be days before you find your way to an exit. Casinos never change.

Of course, the slot machines do change. Nowadays, when you sit down at a slot machine and pull the handle, or push the button, you don’t watch numbers spin, or view an old video screen, depicting something similar. Now, you sit back into a headrest in a high back chair and your consciousness enters a Zone Interface through the neural receptors in the headrest. Your senses are transported into a game world, where you try your best to beat an unbeatable game. It’s kind of like those old Japanese television game shows, or that, really old, TV show called Wipeout. Your mind is connected to a temporary Puppet and the player must physically guide the Puppet through some short, dangerous, and tricky game to try to reach your goal. The odds of making it, well, they aren’t good, but you get a bit of entertainment and the experience of trying to win, with the illusion that, if you are better than the last guy, you have a better chance. As I said, all an illusion, the odds are the odds. As soon as you lose, you are released from the small Zone and are disconnected, your perceptions sent back into your body. If you desire, you may try the insane course, or game, again, with the pull of the handle and the loss of another minute or two of zTime.

Through perseverance, I eventually found my way to the auditorium. Tickets are cheap, five zMinutes, but I don’t dare access my zTime via their Brain Scanner. But, as I suspected, I found a 'Free' show coupon in a casino book, tossed in an ashtray. Of course, 'free' is a relative term. When you use a free coupon, it is always for the next show, forcing you to wander the casino for at least an hour. While doing so, you will, most likely, lose far more zTime than ten shows would cost. Good news for me, I don’t have a minute of zTime to lose. So, I just kept moving to keep the cameras and their watchers from marking me as a vagrant.

I am not worried about face recognition. With the advent of goop, people can look like anything, or anyone, they want. Face recognition software has gone the way of the dinosaurs. But, there are brain scanners about, so I stayed well away from scanner nodes.

Eventually, my name was called and I headed for the auditorium. They sit you in reclining chairs with the back of your head resting within a padded cradle. This allows the neural nodes close enough proximity to make the bridge to your mind and start the show. This is standard voyeur Zone stuff, where you ride the character of your choice. Most people choose Mowgli and, since there is no personal interaction, it doesn’t matter that five hundred people are in the same character, it seems like you are alone as Mowgli.

This is the big moment, where I find out if this is a Skey, which will uplink my mind to my Greenroom in the Servers and connect me to the included Steward. All I have to do is will the connection. I hesitated, but The Jungle Book show only lasts for an hour and every minute might be critical. The Jungle Book show started at approximately the same time that I willed the connection to the device on my neck.

The world fell away like a million points of light, swirling into a maelstrom.

Chapter zTwo – The Jungle Book

I had no idea what connecting to the Zones would feel like, that is one of the missing areas in my memory. Technically, I know what should happen, but it is like textbook knowledge, not empirical knowledge. If this is a highly illegal personal Satweb link then I should have a connection to my Steward and, if I want, I can access my personal setup area, where I could alter any parameters like senses, emotional feedback, and physical characteristics, prior to setting sail for a specific Zone.

All around me, the bright streaking points of light coalesced into a thick jungle and I found myself standing there as a semi-naked child. Jungle sounds and smells are all around me. It seems that I have entered The Jungle Book show as Mowgli, certainly not what I was expecting. The Skey does not seem to have had any effect. I’m certainly not in my setup area, instead, I am linked into an entertainment Zone.

It is strange being the small Mowgli, as an adult, you forget what the world looks like to a child. I parted the palm leaves in front of me and looked into the jungle clearing. There is a large bear foraging under a log he had lifted up with one of his large gray paws. He turned at the sound of plants rustling behind him.

Mowgli, there you are! I've been looking for you for so long that I finally got hungry and needed a snack!

Seeing a large bear talk in English is a strange sight, in itself. In order to form words, his mouth stretches in ways that a bear’s mouth shouldn't go. The bear and Mowgli conversed for a few minutes and I watched, like the rest of the audience, just a spectator inside the Mowgli puppet.

I spotted a flash of black and a panther landed at the edge of the clearing, crouched and ready to move.

Baloo the bear smiled and exclaimed, Bagheera! What are you up to, you old fleabag?

The panther ignored the bear and focused its yellow eyes on me.

It was foolish to enter the Zones through an entertainment channel while wearing your Skey, the panther said, in a very un-Bagheera like way. You're bound by the entertainment program parameters. Worse, your personal settings are still in effect.

I am confused, to say the least. Who are you? You're not going to tell me that you're Bagheera, or this subroutine is buggy as all hell!

No, but I don't have time to get into it right now. Your Skey connection to the Satweb lit up a flag at zPol central because you are in this monitored program. Dragoons have already warped into this Zone, and they're closing in fast, and Zombies are in en route.

I instinctively reached for the exit sequence with my mind, which should have brought up a large red button that I could slam to confirm my desire to leave the entertainment program; it is a standardized interface. Nothing happened, so I spoke aloud, Exit Zone, please. That definitely should have taken me out, but I am still in Mowgli.

Bagheera shook his large head. That won't work; they've shut down the exit protocols to trap your mind in here.

Can I take off the Skey?

Bagheera exclaimed, adamantly, Never take off that Skey! It might kill you.

That makes no sense, but I demanded, Why are you helping me? Then I asked. Are you my Steward?

No, you have to activate your Steward to access that routine. I can't tell you more because the entire audience is witnessing everything that you do, see and hear. I've accessed the program code and manage to give you physical control of the character, but I couldn't lock out the rest of the audience or open an exit.

I looked around the surrounding foliage of the jungle, wildly, but I can’t hear or see anything odd.

Once again, Bagheera shook his large black head. The Dragoons are holding back so that they can get some Zombies into the casino before you realize that you have been tagged. They don't want you to extricate your mind from the Puppet and back into your physical body until the Zombies have it in custody.

How do I get out of this program? I asked, desperately.

Bagheera’s yellow eyes seemed to focus inward for a moment and his lithe body froze. A moment later, he moved again. I've just accessed zPol's communication net, I overheard them tapping into The Jungle Book program. They’re sending a Dragoon in the guise of a Jungle Book character in order to get closer to you without alerting you to their presence.

What character?

Shere Khan, he's going to close in so that he can strike the final blow to zonk your character as soon as the Zombies are in a position to take your real body.

I don’t know what is going on, but there is one thing I know for sure, I need to get back into my body, right now. How do I get out?

Your character is going to have to zonk and quickly. It will hurt, a lot, because you have a high emotional threshold set in your Skey interface, but it's the only way. Afterward, head out to the park in front of the casino.

I don’t like the sound of zonking. Dying, or being ‘zonked’ as a character, with a high emotional limit set, is a scary thought. The large black cat, who is supposed to be Mowgli's friend, suddenly looked a lot scarier. I backed away from Bagheera, toward Baloo the bear. He is busy eating a piece of fruit and ignoring the conversation, since none of it is addressed to him, or part of his scripted dialogue.

Bagheera moved toward me. It's the only way; once your character zonks you'll drop out of the program back into your body, automatically.

Suddenly, the big bear quit foraging and turned with new purpose. Baloo leaped for the panther, extending his four-inch claws and swiping one of his large paws toward Bagheera’s throat.

Dragoon! Bagheera howled and leaped to the side to avoid the sudden attack.

I did what any smart person should do when two large toothy animals are battling to the death, I turned Mowgli's small body and ran into the jungle. Branches and large leaves slapped my small, skinny, body as I fled across the mossy ground. As I ran, I tried to think about what to do. If Bagheera was on the level, then I have to assume that the Baloo character has been commandeered by a zPol operative, a Dragoon. And another Dragoon, in the form of Shere Khan, the tiger, is closing on my position. According to the panther, the Dragoon is just waiting for word that the Zombies are near my real body. Then the Dragoons will zonk me and trace the Disconnect to my body.

I stopped and listened for pursuit, but I heard nothing. The snarl of the panther and growls of the bear have faded away or stopped. The only sound is the ambient background track of the jungle. Then I heard the low growl of a large cat coming from a short distance; Shere Khan, the tiger. I pictured those large claws and sharp fangs ripping through my small, skinny body and shuddered. The pain of being zonked would be real and even the eventual salvation of character death will bring no solace; I will awaken to the tender mercies of the Zombies, a prisoner of zPol. But something is eluding me... then I had it. The Dragoon controlling Shere Khan has not attacked, yet, which means the Zombies haven't found my body in the casino show.

I still have a little time.

I turned and ran away from the growl of Shere Khan. I delved into my character's memory as I fled. Being a member of the audience, I have some limited access to information from my character. In other words, I know what Mowgli knows. According to the story, Mowgli grew up in this forest with a pack of wolves, so he has some general knowledge about this area. There is a large set of cliffs, not far away, where a river waterfall, of epic proportions, falls into the mists below. I changed course and headed in that direction, at a full run.

Behind me, I thought I heard the rustle of branches, possibly Shere Khan tracking me or moving in for the kill. I can’t be sure.

I reached the edge of the jungle growth and broke out into the open. Above me is an impossibly blue sky and I can hear the roar of the falls to my right. I ran three steps across the stone, at the top of the cliff, and leaped out, into nothing. I made my choice. I fell, plunging down into the misty valley below. I never even saw the sharp rocks as I hit. The world went black, in one brief flash of excruciating pain, as I zonked.

My eyes opened. I am back in the darkened theater of The Jungle Book show. People are all around me, in their Couches, some calling out in panic as they come out of the game trance with the shock of having experienced a zonk during an entertainment show that isn’t supposed to feature pain.

I turned my head, slightly, and saw two people, not in Couches, walking through the throng and staring at each shocked face, momentarily, with a quick burst from a flashlight. No doubt, these are the Zombies, looking for me. Fortunately, they don’t seem to know where my Couch is located.

I waited a moment longer, allowing some of the audience to gain their feet, causing a lot of motion and confusion. The Zombies turned on their flashlights and then I moved. They will be blinded from the beams of light and unlikely to see me moving if the light isn't directly on me. I rolled off my Couch, onto the floor, and started crawling to keep out of the Zombies’ flashlight beams. People are getting up, everywhere. With most of the audience on their feet, I ran for an exit door, in a crouch. Once there, I paused; the moment I open the door, I am going to flood the room with light and that will draw the attention of the Zombies.

I waited for the main lights to come on. The moment they did, I opened the door and bolted out, all in one motion. The bright light, momentarily, blinded me as I came out into the well-lit casino floor. I closed the door and headed into the crowd. As I moved into the thick crowd of gamblers and tourists, I looked up and spotted one of the dark half-globes that are mounted everywhere around the casino; these are hidden cameras.

A memory returned, and I knew the Zombies will use the Satweb to tie into the casino camera system. Once they do that, they will have little trouble tracking me down. Hiding will do little good, they can use the cameras to find me and then alert their agents to my position.

I have to get out of the view of the cameras, as quickly as possible, but is there anywhere in a casino that doesn't have cameras? Then I had it, the bathrooms. I looked up at the many signs and spotted the one leading to the restrooms. I hurried, without running, because I don’t want to draw attention to myself; even with the cameras, it may take them a few minutes to spot me in the crowd, if I moved with the flow. My skin is itching with the anticipation of a Zombie hand coming down on my shoulder.

I made it inside the men's room and a tuxedo-clad bathroom attendant greeted me cordially. There are three other men inside, with two of them just about finished at the sinks. I stepped up to a sink and took one of the combs from the blue antiseptic. I worked on my hair while I considered what to do. In the mirror, I noticed that the skin of my face is very red and it isn’t flushed from excitement. This is the first sign of a goop smear starting to make its alterations, it is already starting to destroy parts of my old face and I will soon look like I’m in much worse shape. I need a place to heal.

Because Zombies have not burst into the men’s room yet, I have to assume that I made it into the bathroom before the operatives either managed to tie into the cameras or spotted me. But that is only a reprieve. They will be accessing the recordings from those cameras, soon enough, and they will eventually spot me going