dp.11
MEGAZONE 23
"Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the
future."
--Steve Miller
TUESDAY 24 DECEMBER 1991
A couple of months passed without a tremendous amount of
strangeness. John Coyle hadn't been heard of since the
Wedgewar, missing corpse or not. They had seen no Boomers,
no attack choppers, no hideous monsters. The Wedge was safe,
Ben had passed Scheme and Calc 2, the subtitled release of
Flight 005 was out, and everything was going along just plain
incredibly well.
As far as Kei and Yuri went, well...thanks to a little,
no, make that a lot of judicious hacking, the WPI academic
computers now recognized "Kei Morgan" and "Yuri Daniels" as
registered students of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The
fact that they were taking no classes was quite beside the
point. Of course, being registered as students meant they
could now have their own accounts on the local computer
system. Kei was now dead...@wpi.wpi.edu and Yuri was
haz...@wpi.wpi.edu, a little joke between Zoner and herself.
It had reached the point even where people in the Wedge
never noticed them anymore. The Dirty Pair were as much a
part of Wedge life as being asked not to lean on the window.
They even had Gamma Delta Iota shirts and were now full
members of that sister sorority to Rho Alpha Tau. Of course,
Ben couldn't resist teaching Kei everything he knew about the
computer systems; she had thus been inducted in early
November as GGF-1, Meta Chi, Member G.L.O.G., Disruptive
Influence, Enemy of the State, et al.
Of course, during this time the Zone was teaching Yuri
as much as he could about the local systems and the networks.
Naturally, Yuri, being incredibly competent with computers,
quickly became more skilled than her teacher, although the
lack of cyberlink capability frustrated her somewhat.
However, Zoner still was the better driver, as the drive
to Ten Minute Walk had demonstrated. Since they had no
classes both of the pair spent a good deal of time each day
playing around on the system. Kei MUDded a great deal,
quickly putting Guyblood to shame and nuking him a couple of
times, just to prove a point. Ben, being ardently anti-MUD,
found this incredibly depressing. Yuri spent most of her
time hacking on the Internet, trying to get into NORAD. She
had a great deal of interest in the military technology of
her new reality. (She was in for a disappointment.)
One big change was in the Daytona from Hell. After
Zoner returned from break, ReRob offered to finish his repair
job on the Daytona from Hell and no one had seen it for a
couple of weeks. He apparently had used machines supplied by
itsnotmygoddamnplanetunderstandmonkeyboy, lifted from Back
to the Future using the video input capability of the
DECstation, as well as some stuff he got from consulting with
Ben and formatting some ftp'd text from the latter's hard
drive.
In other words, it was now the Flying Daytona from Hell,
which suited Zoner just fine, as he had finally gotten his
private pilot rating after being in training on and off for
over four years. Of course, the Daytona wasn't an FAA
approved craft. That was no problem; Rob had also
incorporated Minovski technology from Mobile Suit Gundam
which made the Daytona undetectable on radar.
The Wedge was not what it had been, either; Zoner's
earlier comment about resonating the DAKA sludge into a
feasible, Protoculture-style power source had actually panned
out. Something in the wreckage was generating the precise
resonance rate needed to harness the mess as a power source
of incredible potential. (wub wub wub) The Wedge Rats
wasted no time in laying in lines and control systems; with
that as a power supply, the somehow repaired shield generator
would finally function at peak efficiency, freed of its
dependence on the Worcester power grid.
Zoner normally went home for winter break, but since he
had lost his regular job he found one working as a sales
clerk at the Auburn Mall, so he stayed in the area. Besides,
it would be hard to explain Yuri to his parents. He did
visit his family a couple of times; luckily, he could fly
over the drifts which had kept the Worcester area snowed in
for the season. Weird weather, that. Of course he couldn't
go home for Christmas, and his birthday which was the day
after, as Christmas Eve and the day after were busy days at
the mall.
Ben sat in the Wedge booth of his choice, feet up, Drano
in hand, Kei tucked under an arm as he was tucked under one
of hers, mulling over the latest issue of Guitar World and
generally reflecting on how overpoweringly cool life was. He
was also marveling at how the snowdrifts were covering the
street outside. Drive home for Christmas in this? Yeah,
right. He had gotten a ride from Zoner once or twice to see
his folks, but as far as spending any time went, there was no
way it could be done. It was a Wedgeish Christmas this year.
And that suited him just fine.
<<Imperial March, Star Wars>>
A figure cloaked in black stood, his arms folded, and
watched the assembly line roll in the (sub^5)basement of Alden
Hall. At one end, the stasis-preserved corpses of the
victims of the Wedgewar were fed in, one after another; at
the other, they emerged, revitalized, superpowerful.
The figure would have smiled, if it had a face;
unfortunately it didn't, so it contented itself with a small
nod of satisfaction, turned and swept out of the room.
"My army is nearly complete," the cloaked figure
declared in a synthetic voice as he entered the next room,
arms folded. "We will attack tomorrow. How are your duties
progressing?"
At the DECstation, Larry Foard turned in his chair and
replied, "All is in readiness...on your command, I will...
terminate them."
"Not yet. Timing is everything. First I must make the
other two...suffer."
The cloaked figure pivoted and stomped out of the room.
And left alone in the small chamber with the DECstation,
Entropy shivered involuntarily before returning to his work.
If split-second timing was involved and he had a day to work,
he could alias the procedure...