From: mcmelmon@taligent.com (Matthew C. Melmon)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Nagasaki Gorgon
Date: 14 Jul 92 19:15:07 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.




Tachiko sat with her knees pulled in close to her chest. 
 
She stared into the space at the foot of her almost-bed.  Rebecca was 
there.  Manipulating some almost-controls.  Tachiko had spent the last 
two years of her life in this digital world.  Waiting for Rebecca to 
finish her body.  Waiting to walk under the real sky and talk to real 
people, not electric ghosts.

Her body would not be pretty.

"If I can't be beautiful, make me horrible.  Beautifully horrible."

That's what she asked of Rebecca.
Tachiko remembered the old Jewish woman's eyes after that request.

Tachiko knew those were the eyes of a genius.  A mind that knew what no 
other mind could know. A mind that understood how metal and flesh and 
rock could live as one.  A mind that understood a frightened little girl 
without a family, who by any and all rights should have died a horrible, 
lingering death lost in a pool of acid and poison and decay.

Rebecca nodded and the work began.
It took two years.
The hologram switched on.  Tachiko gasped.
A monster.  

It stood on legs that almost looked human.  Not robotic contstructions.  
Not sticks of steel and noby joints.  They were great barrels of twisted 
sinew.  There was flesh in them.  There were also polymers and steel and 
basaltic ceramics and cloned muscle and bone. 
 
Tachiko's muscle. Grown in a vat, each cell attatching to a nanite 
generator as it formed the sinew web.  So, too, the bone.  Along with 
calcium were ceramics and soft binding metals with small generators - 
nuclear generators - in the marrow.  Each limb was a power plant 
weighing almost fifty-five kilos.
 
The muscle and bone throughout her body followed the same design.
Except for the left arm.
That looked different.

That looked like the arms on people in the street.  A robotic mass of 
steel.  But it was not just steel.  It was Merumon Kuroi.  A black 
steel, similar in base to the basaltic ceramics of her bones.  A steel 
that wouldn't melt.  That wouldn't rust. 
 
A hard steel that wouldn't shatter.

The arm differed in more than color.  It was huge.  Massive.  Tachiko 
thought of the ancient armors of Japan.  That's what it looked like.  
Rebecca had designed it well.  With flourishes of gold and enamel.

Rebecca gave a signal.
  
Blades poped from the fist.  Tachiko had seen such blades in films and 
on the news.  Grossly lethal and more grossly illegal.  Her blades were 
two and a half feet long. Also of Merumon Kuroi.

The famous left arm of Omi Tachiko lived again.
The crushing arm.
The arm that always won.  That always brought the crowd to it's feet.

Her face.

Her face, but certainly not her old face.  Half steel - Kuroi, like the 
arm.  The left side of her face.  The left arm.  It was the left side of 
her body that had been ravaged most by the explosion.  Where fire and 
glass an rare earth metals had taken their toll, her face was now a mask 
of smooth, glossy black metal.  Obsidian, almost.  Tachiko thought of 
the stage.  Her face was the mask of a Noh actor.
  
An oni.  
A demon.  A demon with no eyes.

Instead, a glowing green plate of curved glass.  A visor.  A bridge 
across her face, moving from the molded steel on the left to the painted 
flesh on the right.  

A glowing tatoe.  An imprint of a micro-chip.

Crowning her head, a tangled mass of glowing fiberoptic hair.  Green, 
like the visor.  It exploded out.  It swirled around.  It tumbled down 
to her waist.

This was her new body.

"I'm not Tachiko anymore."
"No... I was thinking of the ancient myth.  Of Medusa."
"Yes."

The cute little almost-girl sat up very straight.

"Omi Tachiko, no more... Nagasaki Gorgon has taken her place."




The dark beer had not dried.  Nagasaki could see her reflection.  She 
thought, for a moment, of turning to stone.  The Booster's crumpled 
cyberarm oozed some noxious liquids.  Nagasaki had been kind.  She only 
took the arm at the joint.  She left the upper arm and the flesh of the 
body intact.  He could get it repaired.

If he could find a Doc with a stockpile.

The scuffle lasted less than a second.  It had spilled her beer.  She 
ordered another one, even though they were trying to poison her.  Some 
manner of drug intended to knock her unconcious.
  
There was a high demand for cybernetics, now.

Now that people knew they killed your system in ten years and they were 
no longer available.  Not to the public.  

Rebecca had known.
She knew the millions of deaths were coming.

Nagasaki had not died.  Mordred Heath had not died.  Prometheus Mage had 
not died.  These were biorgs.  These had bodies either conditioned for, 
or naturally inclined to, being merged with steel.

There were very few biorgs.
The rest of the masses were doomed. 
 
So the corporations scaled back.  Not out of any particular sense to 
saving humanity, though it would be unfairly cynical to characterize 
them as completely lacking ethics.  The retail operations were 
voluntarily cut.  But a black market persisted for some time, until 
that, too, was cut.  They were less willing to go along with that.

Prometheus convinced them.
Nagasaki Gorgon had been one of his tools.

She was a willing tool.  The third biorg designed - second only to 
Prometheus himself. And to Mordred Heath, the man who pulled her from 
Yokohama harbor.  The man that knew immediately the little girl with 
half a body was still alive, swimming in that poison sea.  The man who 
called off one of the most daring extractions ever planned to bring her 
back to Los Angeles - to the waiting table of Rebeca Gurion-al-Fatima.
 
The Joint Chiefs had been furious.
Prometheus had been furious. Far worse.

"She and I are of like soul," Mordred had said.
That did not sway them.
"Of like body," he added, ever the poetic Englishman.

Things changed.  The little girld was priceless.  A natural biorg.  One 
part per hundred and thirteen million population.  Prometheus - acting 
Secretary for Life of the United Armed forces of North America - gave 
the word.

She became a monster.

A monster loaded with widgets that brought water to the mouths of 
humanity's dregs.  To those who knew a metal arm would kill them in ten 
years, but who didn't plan on living that long, anyway.  To these, there 
was noplace to turn but cannibalism.  Take from those who have, such 
that you may have.

That's all they knew.

And these people had money.  The Drug Wizards had money, and they needed 
protection.  So, the Boosters had money.  And the Boosters were always 
looking for new hardware. It was a web, and Nagasaki Gorgon was in it.

She looked down at her reflection and smiled.
Gorgon.

So many who had seen that twisted, terrible smile had turned to stone.  
They stood, frozen.  Paralyzed with dread and horror and fear. And 
Nagasaki devoured them.  It would be no different.  Not now.  Now when 
cyborgs were becoming dinosaurs.  Beasts of the past.  Out of sight, out 
of mind.  Now she would be even more terrifying.  Let them come.  Let 
them see what it was, truly was, to which they aspired.

Nagasaki Gorgon did not know fear.

And their poisons wouldn't work.
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk