| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Magical Mayhem |
| Date: | Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:32:00 +0100 |
>>>>>[Forgot to record this from my end, so the intricate detail of my
magical labours is lost to posterity. Probably a good thing. Wouldn't want
_everyone_ doing what I'm about to, it's not _entirely_ safe.
Still, quite a nice culmination to a couple of week's worth of hard work... I
thought it deserved remembering so I snagged Lilith's tape.
+++++begin simsense
Lilith walks out through the comfortably unkempt grounds of a large
house. Hard to tell where, except it must be an upscale area: the wall
around it is plastered white, the house looks colonial, but that's the only
real clues.
She seems to be heading for a plume of smoke coming from the ground.
As she approaches, music can be heard: Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to
Heaven', muffled but distinct, almost hiding the sound of someone
coughing their lungs out.
Lilith chuckles and crouches by a trapdoor, from which the smoke curls.
Fragrant hickory smoke, too. Pleasant in small quantities... but it must be
quite interesting, at least, under the trap door if the thick white coils
leaking through the gaps are any guide.
'Stairway to Heaven' winds to an end; 'Black Dog' begins. Lilith waits,
patiently, only once checking her watch.
Almost on the dot of noon, the door is flung back and a blonde woman
appears, popping up like a Quinn-in-the-box. Or, given the clouds of
smoke and her dishevelled, red-eyed appearace, perhaps like
Mephistocoles during a performance of "Faust".
"I have it, Igor! I have it in my hand!" Quinn cries, holding up something
small and black: before doubling over, wracked by another coughing fit.
She's wearing an old T-shirt that's soaked in sweat and smeared with dirt,
she looks awful, but she seems happy.
"Then give it here, before you drop it." Lilith takes the glossy black
object, carefully puts it in a small straw-lined box that goes in her pocket.
"Are you okay?"
"Never better-" Quinn coughs up a clot of grey phlegm - "Don't remember
eating _that_! I'll be all right. That was... interesting. I've got a
headache."
"I wasn't aware that smoke-lodge ceremonies involved Led Zeppelin?"
"It worked, didn't it? If you're going to choke yourself to death you should
have some cool tunes to do it to." Quinn climbs out of the pit, leaving the
hatch open, and gratefully breathes in huge gulps of the clean air. "And it
wasn't fun digging through that lot of mayhem. Some _bad_ times in
there."
"I _warned_ you about the Old Magic." Lilith says, reasonably.
"Yeah, yeah. It worked. And I think we need to tie up that loose end."
"He's an old man. Nothing that special." Lilith shrugs. "I don't disagree,
I
just don't think he's worth the effort. He'll be dead soon one way or
another."
"Well, I do. I don't want that much death magic floating around loose, I
want it grounded out and he'll do nicely as the lightning rod. Plus I don't
like conveyor-line butchery of people. It's only okay for animals, and then
only if you eat the meat, wear the hides and grind up the bones for
fertiliser. Killing just because... it ought to be personal." Quinn coughs
again, looks at the state of her T-shirt. "Bleah. I need a shower. Want to
do my back?"
"Only if you'll do mine..." Lilith falls into step beside Quinn as they walk
back towards the house.
"Any word from Jason?"
"He's training with the Navy in Everett, since we finished getting our flying
qualifications back. They're giving him a good workout, he's keeping them
on their toes. Sounds like fun."
Quinn nods, pauses for another coughing fit. "Any word on Diaz?"
"Emma's healing. June says whatever was inhibiting her recovery is
dissipating and they're seeing tissue regrowth. The necrosis has stopped,
it's still bad but it's not getting worse. No word yet on how much she'll get
back, though, and they're still not sure if she'll need a move-by-wire
system to walk properly again. How about you? Not bored now the
Agency's winding in its operations?" Lilith enquires, as they enter the
house.
"Hell, no, plenty to do. Sorted out Glamis, still need to keep things smooth
there, I'm going to do Urban Warrior VII with the Paras - you might want
to come in on that as OPFOR, I might even recruit on the board to get
some 'real' runners along - and Pendleton was hinting that there's other
stuff to handle. So, no boredom yet."
"Speaking of handling... how is the hand?" Lilith opens the bathroom door
(a comfortable suite in a large room).
Quinn raises her right arm: the join between real and synthetic flesh is
just visible, a few inches below the elbow. "Wonderful. Tactile sense isn't
as good as it was, but it's okay. Never was much with my off hand
anyway, and even if they'd bolted a meat hand on, I hear they usually miss
some nerves and you never get it _all_ back..."
"Doesn't it bother you that it used to be Mitchell's?" Lilith starts the shower
running, adjusting the temperature.
"Nope. They stripped off the synthflesh and reworked that so it was
proportioned and coloured right, cut my arm back a little to fit - the
stump was a mess anyway - and it fitted like a dream. Swiss Army Hand,
look!" Quinn snaps out a handblade, then extends the razors, then
unmasks the muzzle and loading port of the 20-gauge shotgun. "All the
goodies a girl could want. Plus I've got a grip of _death_ now."
The assorted arsenal retracts, before she takes off her T-shirt: the view is
respectably attractive before Lilith, taking off her shirt, has to disconnect
the simsense recorder.
+++++end simsense
Yes, yes, I'm sure you were hoping for the 'Hot Sexy Shower Scene'(TM),
but Lilith's recorder is external and the wires get in the way and spoil our
fun.
Besides, we're just good friends.
Honest, guv :)
Anyway, that's where I was three days ago. How about what I did
yesterday?
+++++begin video
The old man is sleeping badly. Every few seconds, he twitches or moans.
Suddenly, with a cry of fear, he awakes, staring around his bedroom
fearfully: chest heaving, eyes wild.
"It was necessary." he tells the empty bedroom. "The State must be
protected."
"Keep telling yourself that, General Diennes." a voice from the doorway
tells him. Female, American northwestern accent, belonging to a blonde
woman with a lunatic grin and a huge .44 Magnum revolver. The Mighty
Quinn, present in person.
"Who are you? How dare you-"
"My name is Payback, and I'm a bitch." Quinn replies. "We're going on a
little journey together, you and I, and we'll see if you were right or
wrong."
The old man draws together his dignity. "You cannot judge me."
"No. I just studied you. You recruited Nar'moh'ach. Gave him everything
he wanted, when he fled here from the UCAS. Used him until he broke
free from your control."
"He was never wise or trustworthy." the General responds frostily. "And his
methods were less effective than he claimed."
"Of course. He'd been kicked out of Tir Taingire and chased out of the
UCAS. But you wanted help with your little pogrom, and he wanted the
power kick, and so you hired him on. Just like Sango, and Zicahuata, and
Conchez, and a whole bunch of other happy psychos. And when they were
done 'cleansing' dissidents, you retired, and your merry little crew went off
to the Yucatan to carry on their games there."
General Diennes shrugs. "And now you want vengeance. Nar'moh'ach
harmed your nation, he once worked for me, so be it. I say it was outside
my control, but I am still somewhat responsible. Kill me if you must. If you
are good enough to find me and enter my house, I can do nothing to stop
you."
"I'm not going to kill you, General." Quinn sits down on the chair by the
bed, resting the blue steel of the Model 29 revolver on her denim-clad
thigh. "I want to talk a little, first. How many people did your National
Security Force execute?"
"Three thousand, two hundred and forty-one, over the fourteen years we
were operational." Diennes replies. He obviously knows the number well.
"All identified and convicted as enemies of the Aztlan nation."
"That's a pretty damn broad brush to tar with."
"It was necessary. The State must be protected." Diennes is not defensive,
or angry. "There were surely some who were punished too harshly, and
that is a matter of sadness. But the Republic was threatened, and the
Republic of Aztlan is more important than any one person's life."
Quinn regards him for a long, long moment. "And you really believe that,
too." she says wonderingly. "Well, General, I need you to jack into this."
She hands him a small simsense recorder: a low-res baseline unit, simple
and reliable. Diennes complies, warily.
+++++merge recording
+++++engage safety filters
The simsense judders into life: the General's old, well-used body sitting in
its bed, looking at the Coyote shaman four feet away. The blonde woman
reaches into her black Armani jacket, removes a small box, gives that to
Diennes. Inside, in a nest of straw, is a sphere.
The size of a quail's egg, it is jet black and weighs almost nothing.
Diennes notes, in passing, that the woman's right hand is artificial: a
good-quality cyberhand, but up close its mechanical nature is discernible.
"Crush that in your right hand, General, and then we'll decide if what you
did was right." Quinn prompts.
"And if it is filled with poison? Or some other exotic death?"
"If I wanted you dead, I know lots of ways. No need to go to all this fuss. I
could turn your bones into lime Jell-O right here and now." Quinn gestures
with the Smith and Wesson. "I could just shoot you a few times in the
head. I promise you, before Coyote, that if you do this, I will not harm
you in any way."
"Good enough." Diennes takes a deep breath, clenches his fist. The ball
seems to evaporate in his fingers, cold and dry -
He's falling through darkness into heat and stink. The inside of a railway
truck. Humanity packed in like cattle, in the stifling heat of an Aztlan
summer, as the train grinds along the tracks to an unknown destination.
There are small glass windows that don't open, but no ventilation and no
water, and within a couple of hours the thirst is agonising.
The train passes through several small stations, all of them deserted
except for a few hard-faced soldiers, stopping only briefly twice. Out in
the desert, though, the air changes, a breeze blowing down through the
trucks, gaining strength.
A moment of blessed relief, even though the air is still foul and foetid,
before the smell of diesel fumes bites at Diennes' nostrils.
Several people scrabble at the vents from the carriage ahead, but they are
too many and too small to stop up, and the exhaust of the locomotive's
huge Diesel engines is blowing through the entire train. His skin blisters in
the baking heat of the waste gases, and death by carbon monoxide
poisoning proves to be slower and less painless than many suppose.
Diennes opens his eyes with a gasp. Quinn still sits, facing him. He barely
has time to open his mouth before he's falling again.
Again, a close-packed mass of human beings, jammed into the fish-
reeking hold of a trawler so closely that there's no room to sit. The floor is
awash with excrement and vomit, the stench is incredible, as the ship
corkscrews awkwardly through a heavy sea. Diennes, retching helplessly, is
half dead from dehydration after eighteen endless hours.
Then, the sea cocks are opened and the rustbucket ship sinks with all her
human cargo still battened down below, fighting and screaming and dying
in the stinking darkness as the icy sea rushes in.
The General started to raise his hand. He has less than a second before
the next... dream? starts.
He lands in a woman's body this time. A girl, really. Young, slim,
beautiful. She's in an interrogation room, two armed guards at the door,
and she's being questioned. Threatened. Shown the apparatus available for
the purpose of extracting confessions. Told how enemies of the State are
executed, even shown a videotape of the equipment in use.
She sobs; terrified, confused. She seems to have no idea why she was
brought here: something about a newsletter found in her brother's locker
at school, but she denies any knowledge of the newsletter or her brother's
activities.
Her interrogator begins to set up one of the more efficient apparatuses,
one that had particularly frightened her, and she pleads for mercy,
offering anything rather than have her feet crushed in that small hydraulic
vice. Eyes glittering, the interrogator offers a deal.
She weeps as she strips naked and obeys his commands. It seems she is a
virgin; that amuses and excites him, and he takes a long, painful,
humiliating time over deflowering her. When he is finally done he invites
the guards to enjoy her also: she screams and struggles and pleads, as
they make up in brutal cruelty and energetic lust what they lack in
finesse.
When at last her tormentors are sated, they release her contemptuously.
Bruised, bleeding, in pain, the girl walks home: her parents are still at
work, her brother is nowhere to be seen. She runs a deep, hot bath.
Washes herself thoroughly, scrubbing until her skin is red and sore. Then,
she takes one of her father's razor blades, and lays both her forearms
open from wrist to elbow.
"Please-" is all Diennes has time to say this time. Quinn might be smiling,
there isn't time to be sure.
He falls into another stranger. In an open sunlit courtyard, standing on
scorched concrete, being forced to kneel, one of a dozen or so victims.
The sound of a pistol being cocked behind him, the shots as each man in
the line is killed with one round to the back of the head, the icy pain as
the bullet punches through his skull... but he's not dead, the bullet failing
to kill him outright. His body is paralysed, but still barely functional: his
heart pumps, his lungs breathe, but he can barely move his eyelids. He
falls forward, the concrete hot and gritty against his skin, as the last shots
are fired.
The executioners, finishing their gory task, pile the bodies in a heap and
douse them with gasohol. It takes an eternity of agony for him to burn to
death and he can't even scream.
The clock on the wall ticks. One second since Diennes crushed the black
orb?
Bouncing and jolting in the open back of a truck, Diennes and his fellow
prisoners are baking in the heat of the Aztlan sun. Taken to their work
area, they're ordered to dig, extending the beginnings of a drainage
ditch. They do their best to comply, sweat running off their bodies and
the pangs of thirst becoming agony.
A little after noon, a Jeep arrives, a dapper young officer shouting
furiously at the guards, demanding the prisoners be given water. He even
has jerrycans in his Jeep. After all, how can they work without water?
The convicts drink like cattle, gulping down the cool water almost
desperately. Even so, there's plenty for all: the officer watches them
drinking with a happy smile.
The poison in the water is cheap and potent, but not particularly quick in
its effects. Diennes is still alive, vomiting blood and wracked with muscle
spasms, as he's thrown into the ditch he'd helped dig and the first
shovelfuls of earth patter down over him.
+++++simsense memory full
+++++recycle and overwrite? [Y/N] N
+++++end recording
They found Diennes in the morning. He'd torn his throat out with his
fingernails. Must have taken a while, he'd had a good manicure.
I guess he wasn't as convinced about the rightness of his cause as he
thought.
Oh, well, what the hell. That closes _that_ chapter of history for now.
So, anyway, enough about me, how are you?]<<<<<
-- The Mighty Quinn <20:31:34/09-14-60>
