"Tell me about Blue Steel."

"Nasty stuff," her soft whisper answered tensely.

"Where?"

"A lot of ears, cowboy."

Blake shifted visual from the video feed to an image of the connection net, colorful fibers between spherical nodes.

"Standby," he answered as he floated into her Internet endpoint, seeing the catacombs of the Boeing University Computing Network. He found her process, swimming among the other green interactive and yellow and red background tasks on the Orion Node which was routing her packets from a hot wired ATM link.

He dropped a bounce back routine onto her process and watched as it began intercepting low level packet routing information and sending blips back through the port. He saw the detour and noted its twenty then dropped in an encrypted redirect hack, bypassing the ears until they could crack the line again. Such things had become second nature to him now.

"Blake?" What a sweet voice she had.

"Tracers are out for a few seconds, Amy."

He opened up a video window while he kept her terminal connection in the background.

"Blue Steel is their name for it. The kids call it Sublime but that's just the street beta stuff. Bastards are letting the kids high up on it so they can watch what breaks."

"Details?" he answered when he saw new auto agent processes gathering in a flock, working to hack his new link.

"It's not your average brain fuck this one. It messes with the neuro transmitters some how and it's supposed to enable the cells to relay faster or some shit like that."

"What else?"

"Look, Blake, you gotta leave me alone with this. I been teaching clean for almost a year now."

"What else?"

"You do it your never the same. It crusts up the nerve cells, changes what they're made of some how. You get just a little and half your brain can't talk to the other half till your saturated. That's all I know."

"Good girl."

"I can't talk to Craven any more. He thinks I want to try it and he's pushing me and I've been clean for a year now and I can't let the kids down, so no more."

"No more. Thanks. I love ya, Amy."

She disconnected and Blake watched her process at Boeing timeout and disappear then he jumped out of that node.

He settled back to his home environment with its floor of breaking waves inside a circular wall of data. Maybe it was time to talk to Craven himself, but he was a blank, off the net, not even a voice phone number. That made it tough to get to him from inside the net.

A plain text message arrived. Blake's demon process sprung to life, traced the message through four telnet hops before he lost sight of it. In a few seconds the agent process returned and reported that the system of origin was a public terminal in a Singapore Library. He suspected that the message had been rekeyed through a human slug. Whoever it was had contacts in Singapore. That didn't help much. Ever since Amsterdam flooded the net with ultra high encryption, it was very easy to do such careful business, and in the tech slums of Singapore even a savvy third grader could make a good salary running these types of errands.

Blake opened the message.

What's the name? Who has it? Talk to me or I talk to the Admins. You know the address. 
I'm not bluffing. I know what caused the Denver Rally. I know what you did to Sally Baker.
-Broken Mirror

The last sentence caused Blake to hesitate. His blood would have chilled, had he any. His pulse would have quickened, if he had not been transformed into an immortal on the net. Sally Baker.

She was one of the friends of his older sister so many years ago. Her girl scout friends had sleepovers a lot. They treated Blake as if he were the house cat, walking around half naked as if he were too young to notice. He was in love with Sally Baker because she was the first to get breasts and because she insulted and ordered him around less than the others. Years of subtle guilt followed him as he waited for someone to find out that one night, at 2:26 in the morning, he went down to the family room and felt up those blossoming breasts. He was careful, quiet, and she didn't wake up. No one did. No one knew.

But Broken Mirror did.

He sent an encrypted reply to remailer.16673@pepsi.anon.net.

It's called Blue Steel in Appalachia. Very hot. I'm trying to contact a blank named Craven.
I want to help. No need to discuss Denver.

* * *

The Melt had turned New York city into an archipelago of sky scraper stems, still inhabited by floaters and throwbacks. They cast their long shadows across the water twenty thousand feet beneath the space plane returning from Lagrange-II.

The pilot announced they would be landing in Denver in less than twenty minutes.

"Wake up, Amy, baby."

"Are we there?"

"Just about."

Blake held the small briefcase in his lap and gripped its handle with a loose urgency. Inside was a printout on high quality bamboo paper, the acceptance of Spain to the terms of the Boeing Free Trade Agreement that would enable the accelerated development of the Biefield anti-gravity drive.

The port terminal was filled, as usual, with throwbacks hawking homespun cloth and hand carved stone elephants. The air was filled with the scent of stir-fry and the burning of corn whisky stills. Blake moved past them pulling is fiancee behind him. Outside, he stood in line for a cab.

While on their way to deliver the papers, Blake called his contact and sent the following message: "Tom, I'm in town for a few days. If you still want to get in a round of golf give me a call." If Spain had declined, Blake would have had to inform Tom that he was going to be too busy for golf.

His coded message was sent verbally through a friend of a friend of a friend.

By the time he and Amy reached Boeing Headquarters Denver, the rally had already begun. By the time the formal release had been made, every Spanish company or a company with holdings in Spain had increased from one hundred to seven hundred percent in market value. By the time Boeing purchased the unnamed key technological companies, they were all grossly inflated.

Several anonymous investors lead the rally and made a killing. Three Spanish government officials were executed. It's all in who you know. On his honeymoon, Blake paid a clear third of his stock market windfall to arrange to be lucky enough to hit it big on a dollar slot machine. Some guys get all the luck.

* * *

Rain fell on the stinking rot of Blake's alley, giving an oil slick patina to the ancient cobbles reflecting the restless night. He stood under the draining sky and let the rain patter on his face and soak through his long dirty hair, making his thick clothes soggy and heavy. It was good to feel.

"Git your fool self back outta that crap," hollered Stupid Tom, another throwback and Blake's best friend in the world. Tom slapped his big feet through the greasy puddles and tugged at Blake's arm.

"Outta the rain, fool."

Blake let himself be dragged away. The rain seemed to being him back, give him a few moments of increasingly rare lucidity. If he didn't get help soon, the brain lock would get him all gone.

Tom pulled his friend into the relative protection of a makeshift lean-to which Blake and Tom called home until the next Admin sweep would come through and snake them out.

"Look here, Blake. I got food."

"That ain't food, Stupid, that's garbage what that is."

"Eat it or don't."

Tom pulled the key off the expired can of Spam, twisted it opened and ate the meat brick with three big bites."

"It don't go bad, Blake. They just throw it out cause they always makin more. It don't go bad. Here, I got a whole bag of 'em."

He wiped the slick meat jelly on his pants and opened another can.

"Well, give me some, Tom. You're a goddam provider is what you are, buddy."

"I know all the good places."

"Look, friend, we can't stay here."

"How come? I know all the good spots. I know where I can get us some cake. Real cake."

"I don't mean this pathetic hovel, you moron. I gotta go East. I gotta get my goddam brain fuck medicine or I'm gonna go all gone."

"East? Where? Why?"

"Georgia. I gotta go find that sonovabitch, Craven. I shoulda known he'd be the one."

* * *

"For godsake Amy, you don't need that crap now. It's ten in the morning."

She lifted her head from the mirror and sniffed the green powder up into her nose.

"Fuck you, Blake. What do you know what I need?"

Their marriage started with a bang. The Vegas money meant that they could start out on the fast track. Amy ran head first into the late night clubs, cracker gangs, and custom highs. "Craven's an artist. You just don't get it," she told him over and again. His ability to mix hallucinogens with speedsters or tanqs could take the enthusiastic trip rider well past the inner world of the mushroomers and into whatever heaven or hell you wanted to pay for.

It wasn't the life he had expected to buy with his prank. For three years he had watched her descend into a glass-eyed caricature of herself. He turned from the whore-shell that was once the woman he loved and went out to his car. He read the notice again.

Thank you for choosing Somatico Laboratories. Your genetic composition forecast is 
included below. This forecast describes only the range of possible futures and may 
vary based on the  lifestyle and medical attention you pursue.  Our counselors are 
available to help you select the proper lifestyle and  medications to contend with
your genetic predispositions.

His eyes scanned down farther to the result lines showing the computed probabilities. Colon cancer: 12-15%. Nothing unusual there. It was even a bit low. Arthritis: 42%. Stroke: 56%. Early Alzheimer's 94%.

His doctor told him that the effects of the condition were already visible on the holoscan.

He wanted to give Amy the chance to support him, to share the tragedy and help him live through it, but when he went to her and found her immersed in Craven's brain fuck de jour, he decided to take a transference.

To live forever, or as long as you wanted, free of disease, free even from the constrains of the brain, is what it offered. He pulled the car out to the road and called the Admins and started the process that would take him inside forever.

He checked into their hotel, worked with the lawyers to prepare the Transference Will And Testament and selected the disposition of his body. He decided to let Amy keep everything, to start fresh, and to let his body be used for genetic research by Somatico to give him the startup funds for his new life in the net.

He didn't need to look back. It felt like the right thing to do. He saw no reason to stretch out the grotesque drama his physical life had become. Having a body was a mere gestation, a building of a mind ready to live as an immortal. When all the details were covered and all the bills paid, he lay quietly on the scanner bed in the low orange glow of the room. A priest sat by his side, uttering the prayer that would officially transfer his soul from the shell of his body into his new identity in the net. The needle went into his right temple and the army of nano-scanners began replicating themselves and examining the structure of every axon and dendrite, relaying the complete connectivity and state of each cell. Once the software copy was made, he woke up. The computer gave him a complete environment, supplying his new virtual brain with the stimulation replicating the real world. He felt himself breathing. He could see the ceiling of the scanning room.

Over the next year, he slowly trained his new brain wear the net itself as his body. He joined the community of the immortals. Humans were mere thralls to feed the machines. Government and law took on a completely different meaning without the constrains of the physical world. It was heaven.

From inside, he was able to still interact with the old world, if it suited him. He learned how to project himself into the communication net. From inside, he got Amy away from Craven, helped her through school and pulled a few strings to get her on at the Boeing Elementary School in Georgia. All was great until he got the first message from Broken Mirror.

* * *

Blake new he looked like shit. He knew that it was a long shot. He stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at his old home, the home in which he had watched his poor wife lower herself into her other world, the trip rider sky. He went up the steps and rang the bell.

She opened the door. He knew that all she saw was a filthy bum in a dirty flannel shirt and sweat pants, carrying a bedroll, covered with grimy facial hair. He pushed the door back and pushed his way in, ignoring her shrieks and pitiful threats. When he turned and looked straight into her eyes, she stopped, and stifled a scream.

"You're going to help me, Amy." He meant to stay calm, but when he saw the recognition in her eyes, he felt the old anger rise again. The brain lock made it seem like an old forgotten dream, he forced it back and forced the words out angrily.

"You put me here, you goddam junkie, and now you're going to help me."

"Blake?"

"I didn't want to ever see your wasted face again, but it's Craven and you're going to help me."

She had backed against the wall. Her hands covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide and she was breathing with short gasps. How dare she feel the victim after what she made him do? He pinned her against the wall and thrust his dirty face close to hers, forcing her so smell the stench of having to live outside the system, a walking dead man with out a soul, a zombie with a deteriorating mind.

"Is this what you wanted?" he screamed in her face. "You see what you made me? You filthy trip whore!"

"Please stop! Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, please."

He slapped her sharply across the face. "Don't hurt you? Is that what you said?" He hit her again and she crumpled down into a quivering, screaming thing balled up at his feet. "Like you hurt me? Like how you made them take my soul?"

He spun around, kicked the glass top table over, and then sat down heavily onto the sofa, staining its clean, light fabric with his dirtiness. This isn't how he wanted it to go. He needed information. He stood back up to get what he came for, but she wasn't there. He felt something hard and cold hit him in the back of the head and as he fell forward, he heard her calling out a voice command to call for help.

* * *

Amy's call distracted Blake from a conversation with a contact in Singapore as he was trying track down the slug who sent the last message.

The vid window opened up and the first thing he noticed was that a table had been knocked over. In the next second, he saw a large man in a flannel shirt stumbling forward as she hit him with the glass candy dish that they had bought in Mexico.

"Amy?"

The man got to his knees then reached around and knocked her down.

"Blake! Help!"

He called the Admins. Police would arrive in about four minutes.

"Blake?" the man called out. "Blake?" He stood and faced the telescreen.

Blake saw in the mirror across the room the reflection of his own video projection. He looked young, healthy. Next to that he saw the same face, older, ravaged by living as a throwback behind the scenes, without even so much as a valid personal id.

The man immediately forgot Amy, who ran out the front door.

"What are you doing there?"

Anger rose in the face of that beaten man. His words rose through a gravely throat choked with rage," You're not real. I'm Blake. I'm still here!"

"You're not supposed to be. You're not Blake anymore."

"What did you think they were going to do to me? Do you know what they did? Do you know what they're allowed to do when you're not a person anymore? They hurt me. But I'm real. You're just a cheap, fucking copy!"

He fell forward to his knees, sobbing. "Give me my id back. You're not even real."

"I can't do that."

"Help me. Won't you even help me? Me?"

"You're the one? You're looking for Blue Steel to help the Alzheimer's."

"My brain's going all gone. I think it can help me. Help me."

He looked into the desperation on his face, the same face that had looked back from inside the mirror his entire carnal life.

The face was twisted with grief, he was crying. "I didn't want to have to see you. I knew you could help me. I know things about you, because it's me. I know what I did to Sally Baker, and what you even wanted to do but were too nice to try. I'll tell them everything."

"I'll help you. The police are coming. Get out and try to contact me. I'll do whatever I can for you. I'll try to get Blue Steel for you."

It seemed to calm him down a little bit.

"That's what you came for. I'll help you. Maybe even Amy will help you."

His tear stained face lifted up to the video monitor and they held each other's gaze for a moment.

"I'll help you," Blake repeated.

The police beat him to it. Four men rushed in and pushed Blake to the floor, pinned him and cuffed him and ran his fingerprints.

"This one's a zombie. Reported transferred and destroyed."

"What's he doing alive?"

"Escaped Somatico labs in Nevada. Killed three doctors and a guard. Call in the clearance for the sentencing."

A hush fell over the room for an eternal forty five seconds.

"Got it."

One of the officers placed a long metal pole at the base of Blake's neck. He called out, "Clear", the others stepped away, and the officer delivered a fatal electric shock. Blake stiffened and managed to draw his eyes onto the vidscreen. Then he went limp."

The boy who used to day dream about being a singer, of having six children and a parrot named Friday, and who always held a secret longing to one day be just a little bit famous, lie dead on the carpet.

Blake remembered the words of the policeman, how he had escaped from the labs. He imagined the hard life, unable to complete a legal transaction for even so much as a candy bar. Somehow he did it, he survived, and he almost made it. He felt proud. I will be famous, but just a little bit, just for you, buddy. Because we always wanted it.

:^D