Childhood Games
PROLOGUE
The soft snap of the male and female computer sockets copulating, preparation for an exchange of data, was barely audible. The petite young woman in the business suit settled into the padded seat, built as part of the wall, an extension of the wall, but somewhat comfortable nonetheless, waiting for the entertainment to begin. The tiny room, not more than a cubicle, grew dark as her eyes unfocused, her brain unfocused; she suddenly felt very light, aqueous, dissociated, as if she no longer belonged to her body. It was a queer feeling, one she had never experienced before. Trance-like, her body swayed and her eyes rolled back as her ego separated and floated away. But her mind reached the end of its rope, held in place by the spinal cord which refused to release its tenuous grasp upon her body, and snapped to a halt. There was nowhere to go. And the light came screaming up . . .
He killed Petey. He killed Petey and now he's going to pay. In blood.
The police found Petey's body lying face up in the alley behind the retrobar, eyes and mouth open in a perpetual scream. He had been injected with NH-32; according to the autopsy, his system contained 157 cubic centimeters -- enough to freeze up the entire nervous system of 37 organic individuals. Calculated for one cyberlimb and various chip implants, it would be enough to stop the neurohydraulic system of almost 100 cybernetically augmented individuals.
NH-32 was a nasty chemical, one of a series of "designer drugs" for individuals with cybernetics. In small doses, it allowed those who were mechanically enhanced to have hallucinations, and allegedly gave those same individuals a quicker reaction in situations calling for a "sixth sense;" what it actually caused was hallucinations, paranoia, increased aggression, spasms in the cybernetic systems, and in large enough doses, freezing of the neurohydraulic system of any cybernetic limb or even death. Not cyberdeath, where the limb has to be replaced, but honest-to-God real organic flesh death, the one from which you don't come back and the MedTeams get to sell what's left, if any part of it is any good after the drugs take their toll.
That bastard made him eat lead. Now it's his turn. His turn to taste the pain. His turn to die.
Petey's mouth was full of shotgun pellets; his murderer had used this modus operandi before. Years before. Guinn knew exactly who it was. Petey was her partner. And Guinn was not the forgiving type when a cop, a buddy, a partner, a friend had been slaughtered. Once, she did her job well and with no feeling. But recently cracks had appeared in her emotional kevlar bodysuit. She was tiring of the job. She was tiring of the game. Maybe it was time to move on. But not until after this one. This one wasn't just her job. This one was revenge. A long time coming.
She went to her bike and climbed on, feeling the leather and steel sensuously slide past as she mounted the kick-start. The '72 Harley Sportster roared to life, bringing back the memories of a time long past, a time when the United Federal States of the Japanese Americas was still the "good ol' U.S.A." and when American products still had high standards. Guinn inhaled the acrid carbon-smoke and relaxed upon the trusty steed, a machine about 25 years older and in better physical condition than Guinn ever could wish to be again. She put her helmet on and slapped the reflective bullet-proof visor into place, thinking just one sweet thing, one terse paragraph:
Time for me to hunt you down. Time for you to die.
**********
As the bike rolled into the rubble of the grand city which, once upon a time, many years ago, had been Houston, Guinn wondered how one drug and one dealer could cause the Great Burning of '21, leveling an entire city and much of its population. It had been called "Hell on Earth" by that Gumbel guy on NBC Nightly News in one of the network's final broadcasts, and Blitzer on CNN had compared it to Los Angeles riots of the '90s and the Vietnam Conflict. But to Guinn, there was more to it than all that media lingo. It was painful; Houston was home.
As she rode through the ruins, she saw familiar landmarks which brought back memories of what was once the Houston she knew. Once again she saw the skyscrapers downtown and the clogged freeways, all of which now lay in heaps of concrete and steel. She saw what was once the campus of the University of Houston, where she attended her first college course and lost her virginity, both in the same week. And now, driving by the scorched land she passed what used to be one of the Wards -- primarily Black and Hispanic residents, living in run-down shacks posing as houses, the houses which allowed the fire to spread to the University, which allowed the fire to spread to Westheimer.
And Westheimer was the road upon which she now rode, remembering times past. This is where the Fantasy Gallery used to be. Here's the intersection where Numbers once stood. And now, the curve. The tattoo studio of Dragon Mike and Tiger John where Guinn got her first tattoo in '20. Mike had since passed away after being hit by a bus in '15, but John was still around, probably 80 by now, still drawing, a cybernetic right hand which had an inkgun setup with multiple barrels in the forefinger and a skinpouch on the other arm to carry his inks. He was the one they called "renegade" and "old-timer" because he preferred the primitive, painful needles to the tatlasers. But he was the best at what he did, and the inks from his needles never faded.
She made a left onto Shepherd, weaving between the rusted hulks of burned-out cars. That was the Bookstop, the one that had been the majestic Alabama Theatre years before she was born, now an empty shell, a broken sign. Next to that was Whole Foods, immortalized in the cult classic My Best Friend Is A Vampire, the first starring role for Robert Sean Leonard, who now owned Hollywood the way Nicholson and Connery did in the '80s. And Whole Foods was now ash and charred brick, lost with everything else.
Now she entered the subdivision on the other side of 59, riding up Greenbriar past Bissonnet, turning right into West University Place. West U was home, or as close as Guinn could get to the magic of her early childhood. And once again she thought of Petey and the killer. The memory came back, more powerful than ever now that she had returned to the scene of where it happened all those years ago. She knew the killer. She knew the killer almost as well as she knew herself. And she had known him for years.
"Eat lead, sucker!"
A child's voice, a little boy.
A scream, muffled by lead pellets in the girl's mouth.
Coughing, choking. Lead pellets lodged in a windpipe.
A child's voice, a little boy, laughing.
Guinn knew. She spent three months in the hospital recovering from the surgery to implant the chip that kept her vital signs present. She spent the next 12 months learning to walk again. And she spent the next 10 years wondering where that little bastard had gone.
Then she found him, watching the fire, admiring the handiwork, his handiwork, done under the influence of NH-32, wondering how he could top himself. When she confronted him he ran away, as he always did whenever she had threatened to tell someone what he had done, as he always did in the past.
It was no longer the past.
He was no longer a little boy.
Guinn would not threaten him this time. Guinn would act.
This time there was nowhere to run.
**********
Guinn stopped the bike approximately half a mile from where the house had once stood. The tranquilizer pistol was loaded with a dart holding a customized cartridge containing 157 cubic centimeters of NH-32. She had been incredibly meticulous about this fact. She wanted exactly the same amount to the microgram in the dart as had been found in Petey's body. This was no longer her job. This was revenge.
As she silently walked the last few blocks through the neighborhood, her attention was drawn to the trees; pines and elms and maples and even a larch which somehow, miraculously, had grown once again in the charred black soil. Guinn was so enraptured in this discovery that she did not hear the approaching footsteps behind her until it was too late.
"Eat lead, sucker!"
A child's voice, a little boy.
A scream, muffled by the motorcycle helmet.
Coughing, gasping. A bullet lodged in the chest.
A child's voice, a little boy, laughing.
A woman's voice, high, strong, fierce, shouting.
"EAT THIS, YOU SORRY FUCK!"
Guinn fired once. That was all that was needed; death was instantaneous with only a fraction of the NH-32 that Guinn had loaded into the projectile. The dart hit its target and the man with the little boy's voice froze as he fell to the ground, eyes open, mouth open, an eternal expression of surprise, of shock.
As she got up, Guinn examined her wound. It was a small hole about half the size of her fingernail. The bullet had pierced the seam in her body armor and she could feel it shake inside her, bouncing against her ribs as she breathed slowly, slowly to control the pain. She saw the blood, a small blot of red, moving down her shirt, expanding, growing.
The man lay on the torched ground; already his body was becoming cold, his death counterpoint, juxtaposition to the new life in the trees. Guinn pulled the silver badge off her belt and dropped it on the body, now a lifeless mound of flesh, which once had been her brother. A single tear ran down her cheek.
I hope I can make it back to the hospital.
EPILOGUE
The booth door, labeled BOVA VR SIMULATOR -- BETA TESTER, opened and the petite young woman in the business suit stepped out gracefully, trembling. She had a light sheen of sweat across her brow and her eyes twitched, as if she were paranoid. She put on her mirrorshades and retrieved her briefcase from the checkbooth. As she walked away, she carefully adjusted her brown hair above her left ear, so as to better conceal the in-line computer socket in her skull.
Nom De Plume: this site Copyright 1999 t.ogre productions. "Childhood Games" Copyright 1994, 1998 Larry Alton Garrett. Under no circumstances shall this story be republished without express written consent of the aforementioned author / copyright holder.