From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
Subject: Jungle Man
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 22:54:39 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Followup-To: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo

Many creatures lived in the dark.  Beneath 'The Street.'  Far 
beneath the flying chariots of steel and glass that served the 
lords of technology.  Some of the creatures had been human.  Or 
perhaps they were still, only the race above had moved beyond 
them, leaving them lost and forgotten.  But many never were.  The 
mountain lions that had come down from the hills to which they had 
been banished by the humans hiding in the dark.  The insects that 
had always been here, and probably always would.  The spiders, 
often larger than they had ever grown before the Decay.

This was The Core.  Many cities had Cores.  But this was The Core.  
What had been downtown Los Angeles.  Other cities, ones that 
lacked the sheer size of the Greater Metropolitan Area of the city 
of Angels, were not able to ignore their Cores, and so they had 
been largely tamed.  Reclaimed.

Not so Los Angeles.  The Wilshire Corridor.  That was now now the 
great Metropolis.  There was no pressing need for the towers of 
the Core.  They were never reclaimed.  Not even with the passing 
of the Metal Plagues.

At first, The Core had housed the masses without privilege, 
fleeing from the outer fringes with the collapse of law.  The 
skyscrappers were largely abanoned anyway.  Cheap space, built at 
extra-ordinary cost.  The Tectonic Engineer Limited prototypes for 
what the Wilshire Corridor was to be built on are found in the 
Core.  Some maintain that the technology, in spots, is even more 
finely applied in the dead zone.  

Vast struts extending into the Earth.  Using the very forces that 
churn the continents to squeeze power from crystal and artificial 
muscle.  Though the Core is now dark, it's veins flow with enough 
power to light all of California, even near the end of this, the 
twenty-first century.  

It is only the bulbs which have died.

And the tenants.

Most of the tenants.

The Core had been abandoned not long after it was built.  When the 
Metal Plague hit.  The human body did not take kindly to losing 
flesh and replacing it with steel.  A toxic shock built up.  
Slowly.  But it struck with lethal force.  Very quick.  Very 
deadly.  Sometimes, the doomed felt it behooved them to take a few 
down with them.

It was the end of one civilization and the beginning of another.  
And the Core was lost.  Few could afford cybernetic enhancements, 
so few were lost to the Plague.  But as society withdrew into 
itself, and they were left largely alone, they discovered that 
they could kill each other.  And the cyborg gangs discovered that 
the Core was fun.  

And so people started dying.  And buildings started to crumble.  
And power - though in plentiful supply - was cut as cables were 
slashed and could not be repaired for lack of knowledge.  There 
were no schools.  No learning.  No remembering of past lessons.

The rats grew fat.  The spiders grew fat.  

And the rains came.  Science had pressed on, and the science was 
determined to turn the wasteland of Southern California into a 
verdant paradise.  And to do that required water.  Only there was 
no water.

But there was the ocean.

And the rusting oil platforms.

The seas were boiled in huge pipes.  The steam shot into the 
atmosphere with great force - aimed towards the land.  When the 
wind was right, it would be carried above the city.  Above the 
vast Inland Empire - trapped ultimately by the mountains.  It 
would condense.

And it would rain.

Only slightly at first, but science pressed on.  The rains did 
come.  Hard and fast.  To the desert.  To the Hill Cities and the 
Valley.  To the Wilshire Corridor.

And to the Core.  The forgotten Core, that had been dug as deep 
into the Earth as the towers had been built above.  Vast caverns 
had become burrows of humanity.  Burrows in a monsoon had become a 
watery grave.

But from water, and from decay, comes new life.  And so it was in 
the Core.  Dirt washed down from the mountains, washed off the 
streets, washed from the air.  It settled.  Fungus grew and 
decayed.  Animals moved in and died.  Concrete crumbled and was 
reduced.  Vines grew wild along exposed skeletons of steel and 
ceramic.  Like the cybernetic humans, the Core became a cybernetic 
jungle.  And the jungle had eyes.

And there were many eyes watching Alistaire Niles - from that 
world above - as he was lifted into the air.

Matthew Melmon