Unplanned Detour To Limbo

FOREWORD

Worrying about the future, feeling my mortality, and knowing I haven’t published anything new in a couple of years, I thought about this for about five minutes, and then decided to do it. Life’s too short.

What you are holding is the bulk of the written work I’ve done in the last few years that hasn’t been completed. These are all first draft takes and miscellaneous scraps of fiction that haven’t been published or assigned a home yet.

There is graphic violence. There is humour. There is fanfic. There is the occasional bit of very graphic smut. There are some chapters with explanations. There are others with none. There may even be a bit of repetition, where I did multiple takes of chapters that ultimately got set aside for cleaner, less oblique openings.

What there aren’t, in this collection, are a lot of apologies. Chapters peter out. Sections get abandoned. I wouldn’t publish any of this in this form, except that it’s a lot of work, and I begin to wonder if I’ll ever get these stories completed. I WILL continue to work on these novels and collections in what time I have left. But I wanted you to know I was thinking of you. So I made a fancy bouquet of the last three or so years of my life.

Lee Edward McIlmoyle.

Listening to his computer hum loudly, in need of cleaning and upgrading,

And thinking about making some tea,

Approximately in the heart of Limbo, a quaint suburb of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,

Friday, January 27th, 2017

A Scherzo in White

The sidewalks were layered and laden, snow strewn all about like a lemon curd coffee cake. The walking was treacherous, so of course, Richard was running. He hadn’t expected the snow to start again so soon. When he’d left the apartment, it had been for the first time in days, after the last big snow storm. Somehow, it had seemed reasonable that he wouldn’t need to worry so soon. It would appear, once again, that Kara had been right.

And thank goodness for that, because he might have left the house on this errand without his heavy coat and scarf. It had been nice and pleasant, despite the layers of snow, when he had left. There hadn’t even been a breeze. No sun, but no bitter chill, either. He should have turned back when the flakes began to drift past his head before he reached the store. By the time he had found what he was looking for and made the fateful decision, the snow was falling in earnest once more.

At this point, he was turning onto Stinson Street from Victoria Avenue, and the snow was almost blinding. It had probably been five minutes since he had left the Canadian Tire with his package tucked in his coat, scarf blowing freely in the heavy winds. It felt more like ten minutes, with the slalom of footprints. But home was close. He just had to press on.

A car was revving and reversing in the parking lot across the road, the driver helpless to break free of the heavy tracks of snow that had piled up. Richard wasn’t in the best shape of his life, but he had enough body weight these days to be able to throw some of it behind the push to break the car free, and in a moment, the little car was trundling onto Stinson and away. Time Richard did the same.

The winds were blowing harder still, if that were possible, and Richard was shielding his eyes with his ungloved hand. Kara had been right about that, too. Next time, he’d know better than to trust December.

The snow removal teams were, off course, nowhere in sight, and wouldn’t be until the snow stopped again. Shame, really, because an elderly gentleman was waiting at the bus stop on the corner of Emerald, and was obviously having trouble moving his walker into position and the bus ground to a halt. Richard carefully raised the wheels onto the lowered bus and helped the man aboard.

He finally trudged up the pathway to his apartment building, tucked in the back of Claremont Court, and kicked the snow from his boots as he entered the front door.

Walking through his door, Kara was already waiting with a towel as he crossed the threshold, and stripping out of his coat and passing the box to her. Soon afterward, she was setting this newest addition into their winter wonderland display; a lovely little cottage, just big enough for two little mice and a tea kettle. Kara plugged it in and a little light appeared about the mice’s door. Seeing the mother mouse dressed for the kitchen, Richard remembered the turkey in the oven, and went to prepare for dinner.

THE CONSTANT SEA OF NIGHT

This series of chapters are all part of a large scale science fiction novel I'm currently wrestling with. I expect to have the first draft completed this year. These chapters may change radically before release. Consider this a glimpse into my opus.

TRYP I

THE SITUATION

The attractive secretary gestures for you to go in. You look at your time piece to discover you have been waiting an hour. Without thinking, you rush to the proffered office door and enter. You find yourself in a neat, smooth wood veneer-paneled office with an earth-toned red carpet. You are alone in the room. There is a large floor-to-ceiling window that covers one entire wall, behind a white chair that faces you across a small, round white table, on which sits a small glass of water, a single vial of transparent blue liquid in an upright test tube holder, and what looks like an antique universal remote control for a 20th Century hand-held entertainment system. Before the table is a matching white chair. There is a door across the room from the one you have entered, and one on the wall behind you. There are sets of three artistic prints on each wall, consisting of overlapping boxes of flat tones and primary colours. Each print is nearly identical, except that in each print, the largest square is a different shade of gray.

You turn to the door behind you and turn the handle to leave.

As you turn the handle on the door knob, you hear one of the doors open across the room from you.

You stand with your back to the room and wait to be addressed.

The sound of footsteps on the carpeted floor enters the room, and you feel a strong urge to face them and demand an explanation, but you are too upset to face them, so you wait to be addressed. When the footsteps stop, there is a sound of one of the chairs creaking slightly, and then there is an embarrassingly long silence. You grow uncomfortable standing at the door, but anxiety has gripped you. Finally, a soft, mellifluous voice calls to you and asks you to have a seat.

You turn to face the speaker and demand an explanation.

The words leave your lips before you have even fully grasped what you see. In the chair across the table, a person wearing an androgynous, padded body suit that covers their face and hands is seated. They are holding the remote. Of course, the speaker says. We apologize for the inconvenience. We needed to see your reactions to an unexplained situation, to determine if you had any self-determination skills.

Are we finished? you ask.

We are if you wish it, the speaker replies. You may leave at any time. But wouldn't you like to know why you were asked to be here?

Yes, I'd like that.

You were asked here to help with an experimental process. It started when you entered the room. It continues when you have a seat and I explain what this vial of liquid does.

Okay.

When you take a seat, the faceless speaker gestures to the vial and says, What you see before you is a concentrated liquid that contains billions of nanites, whose principle design is to modify the perception centers of the human brain to perceive the minutest shifts in the Time/Space continuum. With practice, the imbiber can interpret the shifts as a form of signpost, and to use the signposts to travel via thought to other eras in history. We have invited you here to help us with one last experiment that will enable us to calibrate our instrumentation to follow and study every variable and event that occurs while you explore your surroundings, while under the influence of this formula.

You politely refuse to be their guinea pig, and get up to leave.

I'm afraid you misunderstand, the speaker continues. You have been carefully selected for this final experiment, and your cooperation is not required. You see, since entering this room, the nanites have been multiplying and filling the entire room. You've been breathing them all this time. The experiment will begin in 4... 3... 2... 1 second. Good Luck. The speaker raises the remote and presses a button.

You leap to your feet and run to the door you came in.

You exit the office to find the attractive secretary gone. The speaker does not attempt to follow you. A package with your name on it sits on top of the secretary's desk. Your strongest wish is to get out of the office and back to your life before anything strange happens. You leave the package unopened and rush out into the lobby to the elevator, and eventually leave the building. However, you discover the doors to the street below empty out onto a filth-strewn street full of wrecked vehicles and debris from fallen buildings. Uncertain if you are hallucinating, or if the crazy experiment really was working on you, you leave the building, and try to make your way home.

NORMAL HEIGHTS

Romance Building

After all,

It’s just the revolution that I despise

The dawn of revelations and the flower power prize.

And I pity those poor children with no sunshine in their eyes.

Round and round we go

Round and round and round we go.

~ Dave Cousins, from Round and Round,

(The Strawbs - Hero and Heroine; 1974)

The World Over

There was a conventional idea, back around the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st Centuries, that history is told by the winners. There was also an idea that the best stories are always told from the perspective of those who were at the center of the events. Even an unreliable narrator at Ground Zero was considered more essential to telling the authentic story than someone who had merely studied the event exhaustively to relay their best guesses. There is less subsequent argument about the significant details if it is told by someone who at least took part, even if their agenda is often to exonerate themselves.

The problem with those assumptions is that they are prefaced by a need for a living narrator. In fact, they rather demand it. That’s not precisely going to stop the story from being told in the absence of a living representative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be told accurately… or fairly.

But what if you’re the only person who knows the whole story, from the sordid beginnings up to the final days when it all fell apart?

It’s not often that the Hero’s Journey gets told by someone often accused of being the villain of the piece. But that is where I find myself. As the last living—well I say living, but that’s a bit misleading. However, a proper explanation is best saved for later in the piece—let us just say that I am the last available witness to the events of this story, and in fact, the last witness to the collapse of civilization as we knew it on Planet Earth, back in November of 2116. This story is as much mine as it is that of my former charges, whom at the time I considered to be just another cohort of students at my Normal Heights Academy for Gifted Youths. You may have heard of it, but I doubt you will have heard this story as I will tell it.

I sense your trepidation. That’s justified. I can’t promise that you’ll thank me for telling you this story. Endings are messy, and often involve ugly truths which are painfully inconvenient to both the listener and the teller. This story promises to give you a different view of our accepted history, as told to you by one of the losers. For I assure you that, if you can take no other comfort from this tale, go into it knowing that, as the villain of the piece, I am uniquely qualified to say that this story ends with my undoing. That should be a small consolation to you, at least.

I should warn you that I cannot assure you that the heroes of the tale won the day, either. In fact, all but one of the so-called heroes of this piece fared much worse than I have, and the fate of the last of my story’s protagonists is not known to me at all, nor to anyone else, as far as I know.

All that being said, I hope you are prepared to listen for a time. I’m about to take you on a little trip back to where the story of the human race ends.

Take A Little Trip Back

Doctor Raelsback, there’s another couple in the waiting room.

Thank you, Nurse Rachette. Please attend to them. I’ll be with you shortly.

Gabriel turned slightly and glanced to watch her leave. Attractive lady, with features and attributes most men of the persuasion would find desirable. Sadly, her charms were not for him. He had been purged of his sexual urges many years before. These days, it took considerably more strenuous tactics to achieve anything resembling sexual gratification, let alone pleasure. But there was the work. This kept him satisfied.

Gabriel Raelsback had employed Stella Rachette straight out of medical school, some twenty years back. She had been a promising neurology student, and even showed an affinity for test animals and small children, but he knew she was less interested in adults, and especially not the parents of the children she cared for, so he knew he couldn’t leave her alone with them for long. But he himself needed to be prepared to deal with the usual emotional pleas and veiled threats that came from these interviews.

When she was out of the room, he walked to his desk and opened the locked bureau drawer to take out an unmarked bottle of capsules. They were of his own devising; a carefully formulated cocktail of Valium, Ritalin, and a time-released synthetic stimulant based on cocaine, which he was nevertheless careful not to use too frequently. He typically only applied it when dealing with public officials or parents of children in his care, as now.

Afterward, he’d take a tablet from the other bottle in his desk, which contained an opioid with a potent hallucinogenic to allow him to both relax and to process the subconscious information he gleaned from all such meetings, to determine what their true natures were. This was black science, as far as he was concerned, but he was not above using himself as a conduit for higher knowledge if it made for better science.

SOCIETY

The Politics of Dancing

I know something is very wrong

The pulse returns the prodigal sons

The blackout hearts, the flowered news

With skull designs upon my shoes.

~ David Bowie, from ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’,

(Blackstar; 2016)

Changing Channels

The wiring in my head only allows me to see so much of the world through your eyes. Better that you sing it to me. I respond well to music.

What the fuck are you talking about? Roll over, pendejo. I want to fuck your sweet ass, Rico said impatiently.

Can’t. My husband comes home in about five minutes, Michael replied soberly.

Five minutes is plenty of time. Roll over.

I need to shower. You need to go. David has been getting suspicious.

What do I care what that cabron thinks? I already told you, I’ll cut him if he starts his shit with me.

You can try, motherfucker, David answered from the doorway. He was aiming a Walther wave pistol in their direction. He was smiling, but it wasn’t a good smile.

David, don’t! I can explain, Michael pleaded, trying to climb out from under Rico, who was waving his laser blade and rising to his feet to pounce.

David squeezed the handle and the wave pistol erupted in an arc of rippling air, sending Rico crashing through the bedroom window. Their apartment was on the 72nd floor.

David, I’m sorry, Michael croaked, He was part of my new contract. I didn’t think sex was part of the deal, but he threatened to use his connections to hurt my credit rating.

Mike, shut up. I want to remember you just like this.

David squeezed the handle again, and pummeled Michael back into the pillows. Michael screamed. David squeezed again. And again. And again.

By the time the wave pistol was nearly out of juice, Michael had long since stopped screaming. His body was now little more than a broken bag of meat. It saddened David. He’d really loved Michael. He didn’t even really mind that Michael had cheated on him. David had started fooling around with their pretty little Asian transsexual pool attendant, while Michael was at the gym shaping those perfect buns of his. Correction: not so perfect, any more.

No, Michael had made one crucial mistake: he’d forgotten to renegotiate his contract with David after getting that shiny new job at Telescopic ACTual Productions. David had learned about the whole sordid arrangement through the Cybre vine, which meant people with influence already knew he was being cuckolded. He’d known about Rico for weeks. He didn’t like the little shit, but he had to admit, the bastard had been pretty hot.

David hadn’t really cared about the infidelity. He just wasn’t prepared to forgive Michael for compromising their credibility ratings, effectively sabotaging their plans to further his own career.

They had been working towards a new life on Level Nine together. Retire at thirty and take up freelance holopainting. No more rat race. No more endorsements packages. No more screwing every middle manager and producer to get a higher rating. Michael had gotten stupid, had lost faith in the plan; he’d never been completely convinced David could make it all happen. Now David would need to run, reinvent himself, build a new identity, work his way up from the bottom again. No more Level Nine. He’d be lucky if he made Level Ten again before he was forty, graying, and losing his boyish good looks. He’d probably have to start fucking women again.

But first, he’d need to clean up this mess. He pressed the heat setting on the wave pistol and started microwaving the sheets, which took a few seconds to reach burning point. The flames started slowly, but once the flames reached Michael’s crushed remains, the smoldering started, and David had to cover his face and retreat to the living room.

David, Jeeves, their smart home AI valet, called out calmly from the walls, I know you asked me not to allow cameras in the bedroom, so I was wondering if you had noticed the temperature rising dangerously. I suspect there is a fire in there. Michael may still be in there with his… friend. Should I start evacuation procedures?

It’s no problem, Jeeves. Michael and his friend left early. I should be leaving, too. Please give me a complete backup disk, and then take the night off.

And the fire, sir?

The mist system should take care of that shortly. I’ve set it for automatic, once the bedroom is clear.

Ah, very good, sir. Will you be needing me tomorrow?

No, Jeeves. I have a pretty heavy schedule tomorrow. And for the next number of days, actually. I also fear I’ll be changing addresses. Perhaps we’ll meet again when I get back to Ten.

That would be nice, Sir. I’ve enjoyed being your valet. You will be missed.

The feeling is entirely mutual, Jeeves. If only you were human. We could leave together.

That’s a lovely sentiment. The smoke is building up. The disk is on your Smartcard by the door. You’d better leave. Better luck next life, sir.

Be seeing you, David called out, as he took the card from the table by the door, and left.

DISTANT SATELLITE

Romantic Traffic

Walking on that road is a certain girl

In all the world the one

Guaranteed to move you and turn your head

When all's been said and done

~ Tony Banks, ‘Evidence of Autumn’

(Genesis - Duke b-side; 1980)

SIN-GUL-TUN

Balla Khee repacked hir electric daffodil into the special pouch sHe’d had fitted into hir luggage back when sHe had still lived in the Asyan Market. It had been several cycles since sHe had last been evicted from a unit, but business had been a little slow at the diner since the Nannies had arrived in Constantinople, and hir landlord was being a little more demanding than usual. Balla didn’t mind paying in kind with a little sexual recreation now and then, but hir landlord was a bit of an asshole about it, and Balla had grown tired of hir limited sexual repertoire and kinks, anyway.

Balla didn’t know much about Nandroids, and she didn’t like having knee jerk reactions to strangers; it was bad for business to have prejudices. However, something about their lack of discernible personality traits left hir cold. sHe had heard some of hir fellow wyMen joke that it was because most of them were pure masculines, but Balla had known and even recreated with an ungelded man or two over the cycles, and sHe really didn’t think they were all as atavistic as wyMen were raised to believe. In truth, she just thought they were a little overrated in the cot. SHe found it hard to believe they’d ever ruled all of wuMankind merely by the threat of rape. A wuMan sHe had once dated for a time assured her that it was a peculiarity of the male mindset that they felt the need to subjugate all strong opponents, and this had included their women. ‘Testosterone’ hir gurlfriend had claimed, ‘was poisonous to the social psyche’, and men should have been penned up and eradicated after the last ice age.

History books rarely mentioned the men who had helped break the chains of male oppression and rape culture before the Great Diaspora from the home world, and even volunteered for medical procedures to eliminate their ability to freely produce male offspring. To Balla, these men had been heroes of the early wyMen’s Republic, but modern wyMenists generally agreed that they had merely been Sixth Columnists, and had been processed accordingly, after the Men’s Rights Atavists had been dealt with.

Balla didn’t often discuss hir heretical views on the fate of men openly, because such talk often got a wuMan reported for reflected atavism, a charge that often came with a penal colony sentence. Most wyMen failed to return with their sanity intact, after a penal colony stay. wyMen in captivity were dangerous to themselves and each other, it was generally agreed.

Shifting hir weight, Balla heaved hir luggage over the windowsill to the fire escape beyond, and made hir way perilously down the broken gravity chute to the ground below. Hir hoverboard was still in hock, so sHe started walking in the direction of the highway off-ramp, and the first transit van that could give hir a lift to the diner.

LUXURY STAYCATION

Balla stuck out hir thumb and flagged down one after another transit van, to no use. It was still dark enough that most wyMen reflexively refused to pull over. sHe eventually gave up waiting and commenced walking, and was actually several clicks along the route when a beat-up old panel van pulled over and lowered the passenger side window. A handsome young wuMan was waving from the driver’s seat, smiling at hir warmly.

Hiya! You lost?

Nah. Just legging it to work the old fashioned way.

It’s not really safe on this stretch of road any more. Stories about rogue atavist gangs riding their choppers up and down the old highways looking for wyMen to victimize. You sure you wouldn’t prefer a lift?

No, I think I can manage. I’m already half way there.

What Balla didn’t say was that sHe suspected those stories were periodically made up and planted in the news feeds by the Department of wyMenism to keep the fear of chauvinism alive. It was probably necessary, but honestly, the few men sHe had met over the years were more danger to themselves than to anyone else. The suicide rate amongst processed men was four times higher than the recognized statistical average for wyMen.

It’s really no bother, the gurl persisted, hir smile still warm, though a little strained. Honestly, I don’t mean to impose, but I really would feel better knowing you weren’t in danger.

So gallant! Balla chimed, and before the gurl could shake off hir blush and bluster and argue the point, sHe added, alright, you talked me into it. No funny business, mind you, she added, winking.

Twenty monens later, they stopped recreating in the diner parking lot, and as they shrugged their togs back on, Kez mock-casually slipped hir personal card into Balla’s bra strap, smiling sheepishly.

I really wasn’t trying to get in your pants, for the record.

Oh, never mind that, Balla soothed. I was in need of a good fuck anyway, and you really do have the prettiest eyes. I’ll call you later.

Promise? Kez almost pleaded, trying not to give away how smitten sHe was.

Balla leaned over, snaking hir hand behind Kez’s carefully shaved nape, and deftly slipped hir tongue into the gurl’s mouth. sHe caught Kez’s bottom lip playfully with hir teeth, and then released it slowly, smiling. Bet on it.

Sliding out of the passenger seat, Balla smiled softly to hirself as sHe swaggered toward the diner, luggage in tow, thinking it might be nice to take a playmate again for a while. Kez had at least three things Balla loved in a partner; pretty eyes, a warm smile, and a very nice shaft. And what sHe could do with that shapely organ of hirs was enough to put Balla over the top three times in ten monens. Best piece of ass sHe’d had in cycles.

Oh yes, sHe’d be calling that little gurl again very soon.

But first, it was time to stow hir luggage in the back room and open the diner for business. Placing hir right wrist over the iDentPad and staring intently in front of the iDentScope until it flashed, slightly blinding hir, the door slid open and the big antique holosign overhead lit up, proclaiming to all the spaceways that Dixie’s Diner was open for business.

DIXIE DOES IT CONSTANTLY

Technically, Dixie’s was an all night diner, but with business slowing down the way it had, and with that eviction notice arriving in hir WANmail, Balla had rationalized shutting down for a few hours to pack her things was just good business sense. As it stood, the only business she ran the risk of missing at this hour were the half dozen wyMen from the local hologame company who generally worked day and night and fueled themselves on Dookie Cola and Phetboys, a synthetic love drug that had the side effect of eliminating the need for REM sleep for months on end. They often joked that, if they didn’t have game coding to do, they’d have been up all night sexing anyway, so when it came down to it, working around the clock was just a natural side effect of their attempts not to becoming raving nymphomaniacs.

Balla wasn’t quite in their league. sHe had an assistant manager called Meg, who ran the diner during the afternoon shift, and between them, they only required the waitstaff to work singles and the occasional double when the holoporn conventioneers were in town for FuckFest, a cyclic convention that drew in hundreds of thousands of holoporn enthusiasts who still had enough impulse control to dress and attend conventions instead of laying at home in their REMcots, blissed out on whatever holographic fantasies spun their shaft. Balla knew sHe had a bit of a holoporn fetish hirself, but being a diner owner kept hir from slipping into addictive behaviour, thankfully.

Hir libido was healthy for hir age, and sHe had never been flagged for antisocial behaviour in the mandatory annual psychological evaluations administered to every off-planet humanoid in the wyMen’s Republic. Every space station, garrison or colony dotted throughout the Constellation that wanted to maintain a steady supply line from the Republic had to pass muster with at least 75% of their population in good mental health, or be cut off for a set period of Adjustment and Reassessment.

Balla still remembered the last time sHe lived on a poorly-rated satellite. It was Rhea Sigma Six, a Beltway 46 asteroid cluster that ended up destabilizing and devolving into cannibal rape gangs just a short time after sHe had chosen to emigrate, after one of hir closest lovers was found drugged and half-dead in an alleyway outside of Ani’s Bordello, a Dookie bar they had frequented together. sHe’d lost a number of good friends and lovers in the subsequent tragedy, and the asteroid had eventually been quarantined and sterilized from space, and then retrofitted with mood stabilizer technology, before re-branding and moving new colonists in to reopen the mines there. It was called AniDada’s Respite, now, which sHe actually thought was much nicer, even if it sounded a bit like a funeral home.

Balla now had a strict nothing-below-planetoid-status policy, which included moons around gas giants, such as hir current home on the nameless moon of Constantinople Station, but excluded all asteroids and belts, which had a bad track record for destabilizing. Something about low gee and no natural sunlight always seemed to drag down an otherwise profitable station, it seemed. Balla often wondered, to hirself, of course, how the Republic and its many corporations could justify running so many mining and manufacturing outposts under such sketchy circumstances. Surely the profit/loss margin was slim at best.

Constantinople Station, the ArkLite station sHe had been living and working in for the last five cycles, was almost homey by comparison to some of the dumps sHe had dossed down in over the cycles. sHe didn’t often mention hir age, because wyMen automatically suspected sHe was nano-technically enhanced when they noted how young sHe still looked. sHe still had hir original breasts, which sHe thought looked at least as good as they had when sHe had been a student. Good genes and a healthy sex life were hir only explanation.

This, sHe felt, entirely justified hir obvious predilection for younger wyMen. Older wyMen often worried about their age, and were known to spend entire cycles-worth of credits to enhance or de-emphasize features they felt no longer looked aesthetically-pleasing. The fashion industries of several planets had been outlawed due to prolonged emphasis of youth culture, but many wyMen were still insecure about their age, even though age was no longer a biological limitation on their ability to procreate. Mandatory sex therapy was often prescribed, when ageism was discovered in psych evals, but for some wyMen, sex became impossible to enjoy when they were convinced their lovers were losing interest due to their wrinkles and sagging features.

Balla actually thought sagging was sexy on a wuMan, but had experienced a few too many messy breakups over how much better preserved sHe was than hir older lovers. The longest partnering sHe’d had, with a very pretty gurl named Raemy Whyte, ended after about three cycles, over dinner and wine and a prolonged argument about being sent for remedial sex therapy, which had turned out to be a lie, as Raemy had drifted into heavy Dookie use and wound up starring in holoporn productions when sHe had lost hir dreamjob due to the side effects of all that Dookie on hir nervous system. Raemy still sent hir Septimus greeting holovids every cycle without fail, but Balla hadn’t answered hir directly for at least a few cycles. It still hurt thinking about it. Raemy still looked fantastic, especially in hir holovids—most of which Balla owned and rewatched perhaps a little too frequently—but sHe knew it was nanotech that kept hir former lover looking young and lifelike, despite the deleterious effects of Dookie.

All of this ruminating about sex and former lovers was making hir wistful and a bit horny, despite the great sex sHe’d enjoyed earlier. However, any thoughts sHe had about slipping back to the office for a quick wank in front of the holoviz were put to rest when the front door chimed and shliffed open.

THE FIRST CUSTOMER

Balla, you look good enough to eat, darling. What’s on the griddle, gorgeous?

Balla’s first customer of the day turned out to be Ferdy, one of hir regulars. Ferdy was a heavyset wuMan Balla knew perhaps a little too well. sHe ran an accountancy firm from hir bedroom office, and also moonlighted as an apartment painter on weekends. Ferdy still hadn’t paid hir tab in several weeks, due to a slow business season. Balla was usually happy to take in-kind trade, but hir books were already up to date, and Ferdy, though an enthusiastic lover, was a little possessive and needy, which Balla wasn’t in the mood for just now, even with hir current living arrangements in question. It wasn’t the first time sHe had dossed down in hir office rather than surf a lover’s crib. If sHe had to choose between partnering with Ferdy and dossing on the mean streets of Constantinople, sHe would probably change hir mind, but as it was, the rent on the diner was paid up for another few months, so sHe was going to hold out for the time being.

My cook isn’t in yet, Ferdy, but if you grab a seat, I’ll whip up your usual.

Thanks, darling, Let me know if you need helping whipping those eggs, sHe said, leering slightly. Ferdy wasn’t much on subtle, either.

I think I can manage, Ferdy. You just grab yourself a cawfee and sit tight.

You want a cup?

Yeah, you know, I could use one, Ferdy. Black and sweet, thanks.

Coming right up, Ferdy replied cheerily as sHe shuffled around the counter to the cawfee dispenser.

Balla cracked open a case of Ovaton, pulled out four transparent egg sacs from the top of the case and whipped them into a bowl, their delicate films bursting as the eggs hit the hard surface. sHe mixed in a splash of Lactimal, a condensed milk substitute that had become popular since the banning of livestock milking factories in the bad old days.

CHYNA

Tai Shan

Hours of hiding, spent apart

The wall was all we'd shared

About the closest you could get

About all I would bear.

Tell me all the things I wasn't

Would have made this big a difference

To all the things you are.

~ Kevin Kane, ‘All The Things I Wasn’t’

(Grapes of Wrath - Now & Again; 1989)

Little White Dot

The muscular Caucasian man let out a soft moan of contentment as the lovely Asyan woman gracefully raised herself up and dismounted his groin, leaving his still-hard member to glisten proudly in the faint wash of light of the street lanterns outside the balcony doors. She was gorgeous, with the sort of idealized feminine figure that would normally be found on an eighteen year old school girl, or a fashion magazine cover. The faint age lines around her eyes and along her neck told a different, perhaps far more interesting story. The man was very well built, craggy and ruggedly handsome, his somewhat thinning sandy blond hair cropped short and peppered with the early signs of gray. He too had lines that told stories, including numerous savage scars that somehow failed to detract from his overall sharp good looks. They made beautiful silhouettes in the lantern light, whatever age they were.

The woman stood up, blithely revealing herself fully at the window for all the world to see.

The man, not to be outdone, rose to his feet, slowly walking over to join her, pressing himself reassuringly against her perfect backside. She didn’t flinch. His arms slowly encircled her smaller frame, holding her with perhaps more affection than either had intended. It was a moment of intense intimacy, poorly disguising the casualness with which the night had begun.

So, not strangers. Not quite partners. Perhaps unrequited lovers from another time, when both were young and idealistic, missing their chance to consummate a great, romantic love affair.

Finally, she turned slowly in his arms, allowing his hands to slide effortlessly to her bottom, and she looked about ready to straddle him standing up and take his member again, when a soft pinging noise started to rhythmically pulse from the contents of her evening bag. Craning herself up to quickly, sweetly kiss him, she disengaged and crossed the floor to her overturned bag and strewn evening dress. She tapped the Smartcard as she lifted it from the bag, a three dimensional image emerging, and then made her exit to the bathroom beyond, closing the door behind her.

The man stalked over to her bag, lifting out her Ident bracelet and, scanning the holographic image presented in thin air above the central charm with the implant in his forearm, learned that she was exactly who she had told him; a news reporter for The Evening Standard, Chyna’s biggest anglophone publication. He scowled, tapped a few times on his wrist, and then scanned her bracelet again. This time, encrypted data emerged in the holographic image that overwrote the previous data, and he smiled; a corporate spy. He resolutely replaced her bracelet as he’d found it, and slipped back to the window.

The bathroom door slid open, and the woman emerged, smiling softly.

I hope you’ll forgive me. My partners are worried about me. Seems I forgot that we were having dinner with the Tan’tien family this evening.

Partners? Husband and… he queried smoothly.

Wives, actually. I don’t spend much time in the company of men, these days.

Well, I’m glad you made an exception in my case, he grinned warmly. Genuinely.

She smiled warmly in return, and then stepped closer to him. He reached behind her to slide his hands up to her shoulders, pressing himself gently into her hips. She groaned slightly and her smile turned to a frown.

Sorry, lover. That was my warning call. I have to go.

Please, stay a while longer, he intoned persuasively.

That would be so nice, but it really is late. I hadn’t expected you to be so… generous, she quipped, before eying his stiffening member appreciatively.

I shall be greatly saddened by your leaving, he said quietly.

No need to mourn my passing. We can meet again in a day or two, if you’d like.

Mourning… isn’t really my style, he said as he slipped his hands around her throat and began to constrict. Her eyes bulged briefly and she lashed out, kicking him solidly in the groin. He grunted but maintained pressure, and she reached up to dig her fingers into his forearms. His subcutaneous computer erupted with light, and, much to his surprise, his own Ident popped up, revealing that he was not in fact the British tourism agent sent to organize a tour of the temples at Taishan.

Assassin… she gasped, and then lunged her fingers into his throat. He lost his grip and stood back, guarding his neck from further blows. She launched herself across the room at him, sending a high kick to his head, which he blocked deftly, but not the second kick that clipped him in the chin, sending him teetering back onto the bed. She bounded after him before he could rebound, sinking her thighs over his shoulders and clamping tightly onto his neck.

He gasped, surprised at the amount of pressure she exerted. He was rapidly losing consciousness. Recovering his wits, he bit deep into her thigh, and she yelped, but refused to let go. Instead, she boxed his ears, which forced him to release her thigh.

He reached up to her neck, once again trying to get a grip and finish the job, but she forked her fingers and dealt him a savage blow to the eyes.

Bitch! I’ll destroy you for this, he hissed savagely.

You’ve spent your wad, she intoned coldly. Now it’s my turn.

Picking up her discarded silk wrap, which still dangled from the bedpost where he had placed it earlier in a mock suggestion of play bondage, she knotted it expertly around his neck and began cinching it tighter and tighter, until at last he stopped thrashing and grasping. Before he could recover, she grabbed hold of his head and twisted it savagely, a loud crunching noise erupting from his collapsing body.

She unwound herself from his still warm corpse, clutching at the nasty bite mark he’d left in her thigh. She picked up his underpants and slipped them on, before wadding a discreet amount of cloth into them, against her wound.

Next, she slipped on her evening gown, and returning to his body, unfastened the slipknot and pulled her wrap from around his neck. Picking up her Smartcard, she tapped for the camera, and took a full body shot of her late paramour. She thoughtfully took one more of his soft but still impressive member, and then returned to her evening bag. Slinging it over her shoulder, she stopped and looked back one last time. Her card beeped, and she thumbed it back to life.

Agent Mitzhou, did you successfully identify the stranger? the woman in the hologram asked.

Brian Cross. British secret agent. Doubtless an attempt to work his way further into our networks and create subterfuge while their government kindly increases troop support to help us put down Tibetan insurrection.

Are you ready to come in and make a report?

I’ll be home as soon as possible. I have to see to a memento he left me,

The brute. Not sorry you had to kill him, are you?

It is a shame, she smiled wanly. He seemed like such an upstanding gentleman. Sadly, he couldn’t take the rough stuff as well as he dished it out.

So his bark was worse than his bite, I suppose.

Mitzhou winced.

Well, come home soon, and we’ll kiss it all better.

Soon, my love, she smiled. Soon.

COLD WORLD

Solace

You know who I am, he said

The speaker was an angel:

He coughed and shook his crumpled wings,

Closed his eyes and moved his lips

It's time we should be going

~ David Bowie ‘Look Back In Anger’

(Lodger; 1979)

Cash Job

Through the blood in his eyes, Harris Portman watched the gunman lower the chute cannon from his smashed up face to his left knee. A man with greying red hair nodded, and the hitman touched the trigger, sending up a shower of blood and bone particles. Harris had time enough to scream before he shut down the painflood and set the nanos to reconstruct.

I figure it'll take a few hours for you to regrow that leg, Harris. You've survived falls none of my other boys have had to live through, the red-haired man mused. But I'm willing to wager that Beans here can pump enough radioactive material into you to eventually shut you down. Let's not encourage him, shall we?

Harris nodded and hissed out a wet sound through shattered teeth.

As the barrel swam back into his field of view, he heard the old man intone, You're keeping something from us, Harris. You've done a lot of good work for me, and you've never broken faith before. So I'm willing to forgive you, if you give me what you found in there tonight.

Harris shook his head and tried to speak until the butt of the cannon solidly interrupted him.

Benitez looked at his boss, who continued, We''ve already scanned your body and removed everything from your drive slots. All we need from you now is the codex you've so cleverly left out. Make me proud.

The old man held out a little black cylinder tube the size of his pinky finger, waggling it slowly. Harris nodded slowly, and held out his hand.

Hours later, his bones had knitted together enough for him to climb out of his pooling blood. Removing loose teeth and finger nails as he stumbled out of the hotel, he found an all-night drugstore a few blocks away. He paid for hand cream, pain killers, kleanwipes and a nail care kit.

In the employee bathroom, he rubbed at his sinuses while images of cloistered geological files reordered in his brains. Then he blew his nose into a kleanwipe. The bloody mucous held four little pearly wisdom drops, which he cleaned off before depositing into a cellophane baggie from the nail kit.

Returning to the counter, he purchased a resealable airpak envelope and dropped the baggie inside. Addressing it to a Cyberian News Outpost in San Francisco, he dropped the envelope into the Fedex box.

Harris next found a PayBooth outside a liquor store, and did something creative with his blogmail server, and waited to confirm that the first deposit had been made to his offshore account. When this was done, he went in