From: gdg019@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: MONKEYTRICK [revised] (1/6)
Keywords: Rat 2.1
Organization: Fifth Column, Coventry, UK
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 16:40:47 GMT

[Like I said at the beginning of the revised BOY, this one's also been
revised. The major change here is that the AI that was once called Iapetus
is now known as Rhea. Doesn't make that much difference, but it saves some
confusion... Rid]

                  	MONKEYTRICK - by Ridley McIntyre

                   	1. The Joke Isn't Funny Anymore.

They sit outside and they wait. The night's rain is falling like wet steel
needles over the Manhattan Outzone, bouncing off the roof of the car with a
loud, tinny static noise. Three muscleboys sit in the car with the lights off
and wait. They wait for the Asahi Tag Teamsters watching La Guardia Towers on
East 10th Street slowly eroding in the rain to leave for just ten seconds.
That's how long it will take.

 And when the teamsters check out a noise from around the corner and leave as
planned, the three in the car go into action.

 The flash is the last thing Dex remembers. Kitty's last memory is seeing her
boyfriend ripped apart by a bright orange blast and scraped across the walls,
just a microsecond before she feels the blast's claws herself.

                                ***

"Let's take a look at his eye, shall we?" A Russian voice.

 The house is bathed in angelic white light, of the purest kind. Dexter has a
vision of God. When it goes as suddenly as it came, the girls begin to taunt
him, too, about the visions.

 "Didn't you see it?" he screams. "It came through the windows. The light."

 "Didn't see a light. Did you see a light, Erica?"

 "What light? Has he had a revelation? Has he seen... God?"

 "That's what happens when you have girl's eyes. You think you see God."

 "Maybe he thinks he IS God."

 Dexter hides in the dark warmth of an antique MFI wardrobe and sobs. He wishes
someone older was here so he could get them to tell them all to shut up. He
can't seem to do it himself.

 A whisper from the shadows behind him, which is soothing, but so unexpected 
and shocking that it nearly unlocks his bowels.

 "Don't be afraid."

 It is that simple. Boy searches the wardrobe frantically, throwing furs
and leather coats and military uniforms to each side to find the voice, but it
isn't there.

 "Look down."

 There she is. A young girl about six years old with long black hair and very
white eyes. He quickly climbs into a fur coat and wraps himself in it's luxury.

 "My name's Dexter. Who are you?"

 Pain enters his tiny body and splits the skin envelope in a thousand
places, crying out for mercy under the explosive sensation.

 Then darkness.

 "Shit, it went off track." That Russian voice again.

 And the pain is gone and he is new again, and he slowly spends his second
childhood in a Berlin house filled with children who taunt him. But that girl,
whose name is Pain, always protects him. As long as she is there, the other
children stay away. She seems to have this power, this command over them all.
And when they all reach puberty, and the others are experimenting with each
other's sexualities, Dexter and Pain play games in the darkness, and no matter
what the game, Pain always wins. Everytime.

                                ***

"Is he done?" A new voice, English. Female.

 "This is about as good as he gets." The Russian voice.

 "Well, keep running the program for about another month. Then tell him what's
happened."

 "You're the boss."

 "Damn right."

                                ***

Soho. The London Outzone. The Year of the Rat.

 There is a burned-out shell of a pub called The Blue Cross which lies in the
underworld of one of the London Outzone's huge tower blocks. Inside things are
busy, but running on candlelight thanks to one of the frequent brownouts the
area gets when the Feds find one of the cables tapping the monorail lines high
above.

 This is a steamer pub, filled with long-haired heavy drinkers with Punjabi 
ancestry, with rough voices and no respect for women. Sarah finds it strange 
that the women here treat their men the same way. Dex had told her to dress 
down, so she wears a white lace blouse and black jeans. He looks embarassed 
to be with her.

 She follows him through the dark crowd and attracts a couple of glances here 
and there from the men, but not enough to make her feel any smaller than she 
already is. Out of her depth here, she needs someone like Dex to keep her from 
drowning. And he needs her if he wants to stay alive.

 Dex is rushing through this crowd looking for one person, and when he finds
the young man, the poor kid can't recognise him.

 The young man is dressed as a steamer, with a leather roughrider's jacket
and leather jeans and steel-plated, knee-high boots, but his black raja hair 
is too short. He fits, but he doesn't fit; a person Dex, the eternal Stranger 
In A Strange Land, can completely identify with. 

 "Long time, no see, Motorhead."

 Motorhead is drunk as usual and strains his memory to name the face. Boy finds
it impossible to believe that this seventeen-year-old has taken Dex's place
with the Sodha roughriders. Finally, Motorhead makes a noise. "Who the fuck
are you?"

 Dex's face is expressionless. "What, don't you remember the Boy? I used to
run with you back in the Year of the Dog."

 Motorhead returns to his drink. "Wrong. Try another one, matey, the Boy's
dead. The Americans got him. Blew him and his girlfriend up in the Manhattan
Outzone."

 Dex remained where he was. "Remember in Seven Stars? That night in the Dog's
summer when we got smashed and you dared me to ask that woman to dance with me
and it turned out she was FDI? We nearly ended up publicly hanged for that one.
Or that time in the Grid when you got caught in a World Bank shell and I 
had to make up some software really quick to bail you out? Damn you, look at 
me. It's me, Mo. It's the Boy."

 Motorhead looks up when the World Bank is mentioned. Someone could have found
out about the Seven Stars incident - the two of them were real legends in that
place - but no one except the Boy knows about the World Bank thing, it would be
bad for business if that got out.

 "So? If you're the Boy, what the hell are you doing here?"

 Dex looks at the blonde woman behind him, a furtive gaze in her grey-green
eyes. She gives a hint of a shrug and hides her thumbs in the back pockets of
her jeans. Behind them all, next to the door, a fast fistfight breaks out.

 "I'm in trouble, Mo. Real trouble."

 Motorhead cocks his head to the left. "Yeah," he says. "When have you ever
been *out* of trouble?"

                                ***

Dex says they need a place to talk. Somewhere private. Motorhead picks one of
the hologram lions around a hologram Nelson in Trafalgar Square, the one that
faces north towards the foggy outline of the four huge cylinders of Tottenham
Court Points that thrust into the clouds above the Outzone.

 They sit around the red hologram lion and Dex tells a story of how he left the
London Outzone and went to Texas City to join with the Texas Tank Corps because 
their watertight security would be able to stop any heat; how he shot his own
tank commander when they were gunning on a school bus and deserted to join a
nomad Joker clan, smuggling contraband between Texas and New Atlantic City 
until eventually, he found himself a home in the Manhattan Outzone. He had 
just settled himself in, he had some money, a girlfriend, and was ready to 
return as the Boy - once one of the top 30 deckers in the world - when three 
hired ronin fired a high-explosive missile into his apartment. Everything he 
had gained, his home, the woman he was nearly in love with, his money, his 
life, had been torn away from him. For one simple reason.

 Vijayanta IG wanted him. Vijayanta destroyed him, and they put him back
together again in 3 months. They even cloned a paving slab of flesh for him to
replace the all the damaged stuff. He is nearly perfect now, except for the
dreams they gave him, but Dex manages not to mention those.

 "I don't get it. Why kill you?"

 The blonde girl steps in here. "Vijayanta taketh, and Vijayanta giveth back.
He's more use to us dead than alive, if you know what I mean."

 Motorhead switches confused glances between Dex and Sarah. Finally, he settles
on the girl. "Nope."

 "She means that if I'm officially dead, then I can't get hanged for breaking
the law," he says.

 "But why you?"

 Dex nods to Sarah. She stares at him coldly, then eventually gives in. "Ever
heard of Rhea?" she asks Motorhead.

 It rings a bell in the young man's head. "That's an Artificial Intelligence
code, isn't it?"

 Sarah nods. "Vijayanta IG's Artificial Intelligence," she says with pride
in her voice. AI's are few and far between in the Year of the Rat. It costs
a lot of money to program one. It's far cheaper to get the donated braintapes
of some company executives and edit them into a single Digital Intelligence. 
DI's are far more common. Every Metroplex council has one as a member, and most
company workhouses have one on the executive board.

 "What do you think I'm stupid, or somthing. I know what a fucking AI is. So
what?"

 "We've lost it."

 Sarah's matter-of-fact answer makes Motorhead laugh. Then the thought of
someone 'losing' an AI makes him laugh harder. Then, when he realises that a
multinational corp has 'lost' it's only AI, probably the one thing that knows
more about the interests Vijayanta represents than all the intelligence 
reports that the FDI could ever possess, he laughs harder than he ever has 
since Dex left for America. The sound echoes around the antiquated, post-Storm 
War buildings creating a confusing collage of ambience that seems to radiate 
cruelty to the other two.

 And they don't laugh. They each watch Motorhead in their own way; Sarah,
through scared eyes, and Dex through eyes which once belonged to a girl.
When Motorhead looks up at them from the floor where he fell off the podium to
the hologram lion, he calms down.

 "I'm sorry. But that's pretty funny."

 Sarah and Dex's serious looks give the game away. He slowly realises exactly 
why they have come to see him. And the joke isn't funny anymore.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
-- 
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |