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       tHe iNTERNATiONAl fEDERATiOn oF fREe tRADERs iN cYBERSPACe !!     
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                        Magpies Borrow by J.G.Otto
                       ----------------------------

            [============( PART ONE OUT OF TWO! )============]


He stood at the bar, beside the regulars. Just outside the conversations of
others. Always outside. Fingerprints showed up white on the clear plastic
cup cradled lightly in his hands. As he examined it, he wondered how many
hands had held it. Many hands had grasped the cup, but none had been as
lonely as his.

A greasy film has formed over the synthetic spirit he was nursing. It
didn't have to be high quality, or in fact, even drinkable, to serve its
purpose. It gave him a reason to be here. An excuse to rub shoulders with
the best.

How many people had died holding this cup, he wondered. None. This was the
Chatsubo. The most exclusive pit of human refuse in Night City. If you
survived walking through the neighbourhood to get here, you were a member.
And members were friendly to each other, the armed bouncers saw to that.

He had survived. Only because the scum that ran the streets hadn't thought
up a reason to have him killed yet. Shredded jeans hung in near collapse
from his waist. Cheap plasti-leather jacket draped over his shoulders. A
fake Doomboys tattoo painting his face. The tattoo hadn't been his idea. A
joke. A present from his friends. It had nearly got him rolled once, and
had saved him twice. That was the only reason he hadn't got it removed.
That and the price of the surgery.

The cheap shit he had jacked into his blood earlier was screaming in his
brain, mixing with the spirits he had drunk, and adding a disturbing bend
to his perception of vertical and horizontal.

To his left a cowboy was talking to another about the loss of a telecom
post on the East side.

"It's like it's been taken over. It just went sort of black and white and
stopped taking messages. The owners can't even get in to the building to 
turn the damn box off. The shareholders are selling, and the Turing is
dumping itself."

To his right another cowboy was impressing his girl with the stories of his
part in the Britania burn.

"No, I was the one who iced their AI. No. I don't care what Fash says, it
was me. Yeah. Yeah."

How he wished he could have been there. He was a decker alright, but he had
no deck, and no code. What kind of cowboy is that?

One on the edge of waterfall, that's what.

Polaroid shades swung from his top jacket pocket. He stopped their motion
with his hand, and realised that he was swaying slightly. He downed the
drink, which tore the raw flesh in his throat. He placed the cup in the
smear of Kirin that had leaked onto the cracked varnish of the bar.

A few strands of hair plastered themselves to his forehead as he looked up
at Ratz, the German owner of the Chatsubo. A brief wave of his hand
signalled that he had finished for tonight. Moving towards the door slowly
and carefully, he staggered into the chill of the night.

He wiped his stick-like fingers over pallid flesh pricked with sweat.
Hunger, a new demon, gripped his insides and bunched them up tight. Food.

--

"Too" does not exist on the streets. "Too" paranoid. "Too" cautious. They
just didn't happen. Maybe, "Too" careless. That was the first thought in
his mind. But he hadn't even been "Too" careless, just careless enough.

The first noise pricked the hairs on his neck. Not loud enough to place.
Hunger vanished in a second. Fear, the current victor of his emotional
turmoil.

The second noise was loud enough. Behind him. The scrape of foot on wet
concrete. The streets had just found a reason to kill him. Maybe it was
need for money. Maybe it was the desire to feed an addiction. Either way it
was the same thing that had driven him onto the street that night.

Hunger, of one sort or another.

What had led him into this alley, he wondered. Cruel fate? Was there some
mythical figure who now stood over him with raised scythe?

He turned the corner and prepared to run. It was a dead-end.

A quick glance revealed a fire escape hidden within the shadows. It led
into a derelict warehouse. No. He was going to die. He would face it. The
footsteps grew closer. One step and then a scuffed drag. One step and then
a drag. Did his killer have a wounded leg? Maybe he could run after all.

Around the corner came a shambling figure. Dressed in rags and carrying a
rifle as a walking stick. It stopped.

Greasy strands of grey hair surrounded a florid-red face. Laboured breath
came through an equally greasy beard. A ragged brown mac hung open,
displaying rounds of ammunition on the belt of the old man.

"Well, well. A Doomboy, after all these years." The figure grinned a 
nicotine smile. "Looks like I'm going to get my revenge, doesn't it boy?"

He backed up against the wall. "I don't want any trouble, old man."

A chromed arm raised the rifle to point at his face. "What's your name,
boy?"

"Justin."

"Say your prayers, Justin."

"That wouldn't be very wise", Justin warned. "I've got a head nuke."

The old man laughed callously. His eyes glinted, reflecting the pale street
light. "That I doubt. Anyway, what if you have? Do you think I want to live
after all you've done to me?"

Keep him talking, humanize yourself. The rules of survival came flooding
back to him.

"What have I done to deserve this?"

The old man lowered the gun thoughtfully. "You bastards killed my family.
My wife, my son and my grandchildren. And you have the nerve to ask what
you've done?"

"He's not the one you want."

The polite voice drifted from the fire escape. The woman who dropped
lightly to the ground landed almost silently. A machine-pistol in her
confident grip.

She laughed. "Doomboys WANT to die. They ENJOY death. If this kid was a
Doomboy, you'd be decorating the walls of this stinking alley." She looked
at Justin. "I've seen enough psychos to clock them on sight."

The old man leered. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. I'll kill him
anyway. Just to be sure."

"And then again, maybe you won't." Her gun lifted to aim at his head.

Justin fainted.

--

He started awake. His face and shirt were soaked. The hard floor of the
warehouse lay under him. His head had been resting on his rolled up jacket.
The woman dropped the bucket she had been holding behind a crate in the
corner of the room.

"So kind of his majesty to join us for breakfast."

The fluorescents painted after-images of green and purple on his eyes. He
rolled over to shield them from the light, reaching for his shades.

"Why is it drugees are always prepared to put themselves through hell for a
few minutes of pleasure?"

His temple-jack throbbed in time to his headache. It was his only
enhancement and fairly new, it still hurt when he woke up in the morning.
He slipped his shades on and looked at the stranger who had saved his life.

"You wouldn't understand", he managed before the pain choked him off.

She was sitting, cross-legged, on a plastic crate, watching him. "I guess
not", she answered sardonically. "You want something to eat?"

The thought of food stabbed at his stomach, cramping it. Unable to stop
himself he tried to retch the contents of an already empty stomach onto the
floor of the warehouse. The sharp, familiar taste of bile in his mouth.

Helping hands lifted him to half-sitting position. Careful hands loosened
his shirt and healing hands soothed his raking cough.

Half-conscious and dribbling the last of his remaining bodily fluids from
the side of a slack mouth, he heard her swear softly.

"Why am I such a sucker for these strays?"

He felt a straw pushed into his mouth and cool, clear water slowly
trickling through it. He gagged once then swallowed, on reflex.

"That's it, swallow it all."

The water stopped and she pushed a pill into his mouth. It slid down his
throat.

"Electrolyte. You'll just be sick again unless you have it."

More water. Then increasing darkness as her voice faded.

"Ok, you can rest."

--

Wet and warm. He was lying in something wet.

"Jesus, will you stop throwing up. I'm trying to save your life, asshole."

Wet and warm. The smell of bile.

--

Dark.

"Hold him down until I get this needle in." A man's voice.

Strong hands gripped his thrashing body, pinning him.

Stab in his arm... He screamed.

--

Numb.

"That's all I can do for him here."

"Thank you, Philip", the woman's voice said. "Thank you for coming, and for
everything you've done."

"I still owe you one, remember?"

She laughed, brightly. "I know how you could even the score."

--

Cold.

"He'd have to come into my clinic for that."

"Can we move him yet?"

"Probably, but it might be best to wait for that kind of surgery."

"Philip. He needs it done as soon as possible, that's why he's in this kind
of shape. I had to rescue him from a Solo last night."

--

Hot.

"Justin? Nurse. I think he's..."

--

Bright.

"Sorry."

The blind was drawn down over the window and he could see where he was. He
was in a bed in some sort of hospital room.

The woman who had saved him stood by the window.

"Are you hungry yet?", she asked him. Concern?

"I guess", he answered, realising he was.

His face was bandaged up, and his head no longer hurt. "How did I get here?"

She looked up at the ceiling. "Let's just say you owe me one."

He struggled to sit upright and peeled the bandage off.

"You might want to... never mind."

He looked up at her. It was the first time he had really looked at her. She
was built more like a dancer than a street fighter. Slim and tall, she
appeared to move with unconscious grace. Her clothes, a patchwork top and
trousers, seemed to be made of diamonds of different colours. The neck of
her top and the end of her sleeves were decorated with stained white lace.

Her long brown hair hung, twisted and knotted in intricate patterns, over
her right shoulder. The only identifying symbol she wore was a silver 
broach of a man with three horns on his head.

"Something the matter?"

"No. I was just trying to work out who you were."

She smiled impishly. "I'm a jester."

Her brow furrowed with annoyance at his blank expression, then softened
again. "Ok, I'll let you off, we aren't that big yet."

She moved over to the table at the side of his bed and lifted the cover of
the tray that sat there.

"And for breakfast, this morning we have...er..." She tasted the bowl of
grey slush with one finger. "Food, of some kind, I think."

He reached out for it hungrily. Grasping the plastic spoon sat beside the
tray. It was hot and wet and it was food. That was all that mattered.

She sat on the window-sill and watched him gorge with a faintly
disapproving expression.

"What's your ID?", she asked suddenly.

Justin stopped eating. "Datacrime2... but"

"Easy", she interrupted him, jovially, "You're too damn unhealthy to be
anything else."

She laughed and the tiny silver bells knotted into her hair jingled quietly.
He found himself wondering how she had moved so silently last night. He went 
back to his bowl of slop.

"What's your name?", he asked.

The impish smile again, and silence.

"I've got to call you something...", he protested.

"Ok", she answered, "Call me Something."

She fell silent and let him finish.

--

He awoke when the door opened, and the doctor entered. He was a short man,
with thin hair but a young face. His badge read "Dr Philip Ross".

"How's the patient?", he asked addressing the question to Something while
looking at Justin.

Something rose from her half-lotus to face him.

"He'll live. I want him out of here as quickly as possible."

The doctor looked sceptical. Then agreed.

"Ok, after two days on his back he could do with a some fresh air, and
exercise."

Two days? "Whoa! Two days?"

Something donned a critical expression and waved her hand dismissively.
"Relax. We had to sedate you, to stop you vomiting all over the floor of
my warehouse." She looked a little annoyed at that. "It's not like you have
any pressing engagements."

Justin held back his sarcastic reply. It was true. He hadn't.

She held his embarrassed gaze just long enough to get the point across. He
owed her a lot. He wasn't in a position to raise objections.

"Thank you, Philip."

The doctor looked at Justin with barely concealed disgust. "I'm sure I'll
never understand you. Why you would want to help an ungrateful little..."

"Philip", she stopped him with a finger on his lips. "People in Glass
Houses. Who was helping you when I found you?"

He lowered his gaze.

"Ok, I'm sorry." He reached out his hand to Justin. "Good luck. Take it
easy for a while."

--

The day passed quickly. The seemed to be no-one in Night City that didn't
owe Something a favour. Had she taken them all, as she had him, out of the
gutter? It was a day of fulfilment for Justin. When it drew to an end he
stood before a satisfied Something as a new man. New clothes, a cyberspace
deck and a program. All he needed to start on his path to success.

The program and the deck were a little dated but they were better than no
deck at all. Something had breezed into his life and turned it around. 
Where she went she brought joy and hope into the lives of others.

He found his feelings towards her were beyond his petty vocabulary to
describe. As the hours passed and night approached, he discovered that being
with her now felt like the most natural thing in the world. The thought of
her not being there tomorrow, when he woke, scared him.

As he finished his last meal with her before he started out on his own, he
found one question come up again and again in his mind.

Finally she took his plate away from him and set it to one side.

"What's up?", she asked. The serious tone of her voice told him that now
should be the time to talk. There might not be another.

Justin struggled to find the words. "I just owe so much", he managed.

"That's Ok", she chirped, "You just owe me one." 

She studied his expression. "That's not all, is it?"

"No... I. I just want to understand. I wanted to know what you got out of
all of this?"

Her face dropped and he knew that he had said the wrong thing. In her
expression was pain. And sorrow. And pity. She took his head in her hands
and looked straight into his eyes.

"If you don't understand", she eventually replied, "There's nothing left
for me to say." She smiled sadly. "I hate goodbyes, so I'm going to leave
now."

She stood up and blew him a kiss.

"Goodbye Justin. Don't forget to put the light out."

And she was gone.

He ran his hand over his new skin. The doctor at the clinic had removed
his tattoo. So cleanly that it was like it had never been there at all. In
the silence of the warehouse he realised that he hadn't even said a proper
"thank you".

--

He re-referenced.

The white hot strings that marked the points of the matrix strummed to a
rhythm plucked by other cowboys. He was an outsider here. Still.

He checked his toolbox. A programming language and a class library. That
was all he had. All except that cartridge Something had given him.

"I don't know what it is exactly, but the guy who had it seemed to think it
was more important than his continuing to breathe."

Maybe he shouldn't try it here. Maybe he should wait.

For what? He didn't have a RevEng program so he had to fire it and see what
happened.

Justin re-sized his target field and aimed the HeadUp cross-hairs to point
at a small law firm. If this was what he hoped, it should crack the defences
of the firm. Allowing him access to their data. 

Data meant money. And money meant food.

He pulled the icon of the shield from his toolbox and dragged it onto the
HUD. He dropped the program into the desktop launcher. The icon blinked and
then erased itself. He swore. It was a one-shot program and he had wasted 
it. It hadn't worked at all. He would be hungry for a while yet.

"What's up?"

He spun to face another decker.

"My first run", Justin began, "and my Icebreaker just boinGGed."

The other decker hummed knowingly. "Happens to the best of us. That was your
only copy? Here..."

Three bright specks flew across the void to float in front of Justin. They
were programs. He scooped them up before they executed. A stealth shield, a
countermeasure program and a redirection pipe, all very useful programs.

"Thanks."

"You gonna burn that lawyer structure then?", the decker asked him. 
Professional curiosity.

"I'm sure as hell gonna try", Justin answered, "any hints?"

"I can do better than that", the decker responded, "I'll help you."

--

The data structure was shaped like the company symbol, a rising sun passing
over a river valley. A very sophisticated assembling of pyramids and cubes,
the building blocks of cyberspace. The skin of the valley walls seemed to
peel away as they flew through into the data core. The decker pointed to the
key points of the structure, the gate, the mailer and the computer's system
data store.

"Okay, see that object over there that looks like a sea urchin?"

Justin looked at where the decker pointed. It was a sphere covered in short
pyramidal spikes. It was a faint green colour and as he watched, it grew.
Swelling up to well over twice it's previous size.

"It's preparing a big one."

The sea-urchin deflated, releasing thousands of tiny specks from between the
spines. They floated, like dandelion seeds on the wind, swirling and
drifting in cyberspace. The sea-urchin spat again, this time a sphere grew
from its side. Like a bubble inflating, it formed and then divided from its
creator.

"It knows we're here. Somewhere."

More of the specks squirted from the urchin, completely surrounding both 
their creator and the sphere.

"What is it?", Justin asked.

"The spiked object is the ICE generator. Low class, white only. The sphere
is affectionately termed Arnold. Whatever happens, don't touch it. Those 
specks are forming a minefield. On their own they're known as conditionals."

The decker flashed a piece of code in through Justin's mailbox. It was a
section of source code, for the conditionals. It consisted entirely of an
IF statement. On contact, kill your parent shell.

"I don't understand. How could one of those hurt us?"

The decker laughed. "They don't hurt us. But the mainframe is tracking each
speck separately. If one of those processes dies it knows exactly where we
are. Take it from me, a quick brush with Arnold will make sure you never
bump into a conditional again."

Justin started. "Lethal?"

"No. But the headache will last for days."

Justin watched the conditionals forming. "So what do we do? Are we going to 
destroy the ICE generator?"

"Never ever try to kill an ICE generator. You can't do it. Besides, that's
exactly what it wants us to do. That would tell it exactly where we are."

"So what ARE we going to do?"

The decker released a speck of code, almost identical to the conditionals.
As it reached the halfway point between them and the ICE generator, it began
to divide. Like an explosion, it multiplied so fast that it filled the space
taken by the minefield in under a second. The conditionals began to vanish
as they came into contact with the new specks. Arnold shot through the cloud
and began to mop up the new processes. But even to Justin's inexperienced
eye, he could see that Arnold was losing. The specks had surrounded the ICE
generator and were spreading.

"Bubble", the decker said laconically. Then: "Goddamn. This ICE is real low
grade shit. Come on, let's grab something before the mainframe dumps 
itself."

He swooped off into one of the data banks, leaving Justin on his own. Justin
had prepared for this part of the run. He hadn't believed that he would last
long, but here he was. So he executed a quick search algorithm for the major
corporations' names. Within seconds he had isolated several files including
the names of the major corps. Within a few more he had tens of mid-sized
corps' files too.

Some of the files would be about law suits against the corporations. Others
would be law suits on behalf of them. Either way, he could sell this
confidential information back to either, or both, sides of the battle.

The decker returned to his side. "We have to get out of here, now."

They re-referenced.

--

From outside of the data structure they saw the whole battle. The bubbles
were spilling out through the sides of the valley and swarming over the
structure. From the underside another stranger program was merging with the
valley. Where it touched it turned the data black and white. The
monochromatic colours spread, like ink in water, through the company.

A thought nagged at Justin's mind. Where had he seen this before?

"The virus."

The decker turned to him. "Sorry, what was that?"

"The virus, that everyone's talking about. It's yours."

The stranger performed a bow. "Magpie is my name. Pleased to meet you."

The virus spread.

--

It was a bar. Like any other. Except that this bar hadn't existed two
seconds ago. Technically speaking, it still didn't.

Magpie took a seat and Justin followed him.

"Datacrime2 is a little long don't you think?", Magpie asked him. "Maybe you
should use DC 2, it's a little easier."

Justin thought about that. "Yeah, I guess so."

They sat for a moment and looked around the non-existent bar.

"What do you think of my virus then?"

"I've never really heard of a magpie virus before."

Magpie leant forward onto a table that wasn't there and began to explain 
the principle of his virus.

"The magpie is a bird. It has always been portrayed as a thief because it
likes to collect shiny objects. Unfortunately this sometimes means they
take rings, necklaces and stuff, things that people need. So I thought about
it for a bit and came up with the program." He pointed around him at the
walls of the bar, the black and white swirling danced over the impossibly
smooth surface.

"You see magpies don't steal things. They borrow them. They always return
the item once they're finished with it. So I thought of a virus that would
collect me companies, collect me AIs and collect me data structures."

He pointed once more to the bar around him, the one the virus had formed
in place of the old law firm.

"But when are you going to return them?", Justin asked.

Magpie grinned. "When I'm finished with them, of course."

Justin tried once more. "Yeah, but when is that?"

"When I have them all."

--

Selling the data hadn't been as difficult as Justin had thought. The world
was full of fences. In the City of the Night, they were practically an 
epidemic. He sat at a table in the Chatsubo. A table with other cowboys.
Someone had heard of his first run today and had left his first talisman
behind the bar for him. He held it in his hand. A silver badge, in the shape
of the logo of the company he had just burnt. Britania Lawyers Incorporated,
part of the Britania Group.

"Hey DC, you see the virus today?", one of his companions asked. He
recognised the guy as the cowboy who had been at the bar the day he had been 
rescued by Something.

Something. He must find her. See how she was. Later, he was busy now.

"Don't be a wilson, Phan. The virus hasn't been seen for weeks. They reckon
that a corp isolated the artificial intelligence." This was a second cowboy,
one known as Fash.

"What if it's being spread by someone? Isolating the infected AI wouldn't
stop it then would it?", Justin asked.

Fash turned to him, "No, mate. They isolated the intelligence of the virus.
Apparently it was an AI virus. It wrote itself. The AI that first went down
hard coded itself into the virus strain. The corp that took it out say they
destroyed it, but we reckon they've got a copy somewhere."

Justin turned the program over and over in his hand. The program that
Something had given him. The one that hadn't worked. The one he had run
without finding out what it was. The one he had run just before Magpie had
appeared... As if from nowhere.

In his head the ghostly voice of Something said, "I don't know what it is 
exactly, but the guy who had it seemed to think it was more important than
his continuing to breathe."

Then the laugh, and the voice that whispered, "When I have them all."

He staggered to his feet. Blood drumming in his head.

"I can't remember who it was that stopped it. British company", Fash said.

Justin put the program cartridge on the table. His fingers traced the
lettering on the front of it. He didn't remember saying it out loud, but he
must have because Fash replied.

"Yeah, Britania. That was it."

--
      Usual ©opyright applies to J.G.Otto [cs92jgo@brunel.ac.uk] 1993

     [======( END OF PART 1/2! THE NEXT PART IN THE NEXT CHART)======]

  _______________________________________________________________________
       tHe iNTERNATiONAl fEDERATiOn oF fREe tRADERs iN cYBERSPACe !!     
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