From pyramid!oracle!apple!claris!ames!mailrus!ukma!rutgers!att!ihlpa!fish Tue Feb 7 09:37:52 PST 1989 Note: this story is out of sequence from the original series. It made more sense to put the stories in this order this time around. Fish --- [In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile...] "DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" An amplified voice roared from somewhere beyond the blazing wreckage of the delivery truck I had just taken out. I instinctively fired a burst from my MAC-10 in the direction of the squawking and sprinted off. Bullets grazed off the pavement behind me, and I winced at a loud ping from the rear wheel. The bike swayed crazily and went down as I tried to lean it around the corner of a warehouse building. I scrambled down a loading dock to reach the only cover available, a narrow, filthy space between the building and a large dumpster. Several cars screeched to a halt as I dove into the gap. The voice I'd heard earlier squawked, "THROW OUT YOUR WEAPON! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!" I answered with a burst of submachine gun fire. My situation was grim, but it could have been worse. I had a defensible position, two and a half mags of ammo, and four grenades. They wouldn't get me without paying dearly. They weren't real cops, of course. There weren't any real cops left, just private security guards employed by The Twenty. Cities contracted with the goons to patrol the adjoining roadways. This supposedly saved tax dollars, but was a laughable system. It was all these idiots could to to keep from shooting each other; cooperation was virtually nonexistent. This was one of the reasons I'd been able to operate for so long. But now they had me in a spot. Perhaps it would all end here. How had it all begun? ... I was born Spiro Bikopoulis on February 14, 1965 in Oak Park, Illinois. My father was a prosperous importer of foods and specialty items from his native Greece. I played football and soccer in high school, then did a stint with the Marines, where I taught hand-to-hand combat and automatic weapons at the U. S. Naval Academy. After the Service, I picked up degrees in Physics and Metallurgical Engineering at Caltech, where I started building bike frames as a project, and later for the racing team I captained. As a bike racer, I moved up rapidly, particularly after word got around that bumping me on purpose was a mistake. I even got to the Olympic trials in '92, but I was disqualified when a California race official detected traces of Tylenol in a surreptitiously obtained sample of my urine. "I had a headache," I told him. "besides, I took it after the race!" "Don't serve me a plateful of irrelevant arguments, you fool!" the official countered, "it's right here on page 387 in volume 3 of the USCF rule book (revised 1992). You're out! Finished! Disqualified!" I left the race official with volume 3 of his rule book stuck in a most uncomfortable place, and quit sanctioned bike racing forever. [Note: if you were not following this newsgroup in the summer of 1988, you'll have missed the significance of this inside joke. -- Fish] That was when everything started to go to hell, anyway. The Economic Holocaust had begun, first with import restrictions, then the repeal of anti-trust and conflict of interest laws. What had begun in the 1980's, with leveraged buy-outs and insider trading, ran rampant once government "interference" was out of the way. A group of giant corporations known as The Twenty soon emerged, crushing all competition and gaining a strangle-hold on the Government. In 1992, the Corporatist-controlled Congress passed all kinds of ridiculous laws designed to curb the demand for Japanese goods. One such was the Bicycle Act, which cut off federal highway money to any state that didn't strip bicycles of any claim of right of way on the public roads. Shortly after it was passed, reports of bicycle fatalities all around the Country rose sharply. The same hotheads, rednecks, and hell-raisers who once merely harassed cyclists had upped the stakes to what amounted to legalized murder. The nation's roads became a living Hell. As The Twenty expected, bicycle sales, and hence imports, dropped off to nothing. The nation's highways were ruled by motor-driven hooligans who killed for sport. It had to stop. I, Spiro Bikopoulis, alias Spike Bike, would make the roads a living Hell for _them_. My old Marine uniform and some forged orders got me into the Joliet Arsenal, where I learned the place's weaknesses and established my secret entrance. I soon had an extensive collection of military ordnance -- and I knew how to use it. I began my campaign around rowdy roadhouses and construction sites in my native Illinois, leaving a wake of blood, fire, and destruction, as driver after driver, trying to turn me into road kill, discovered too late that I wasn't defenseless. Soon the attacks diminished, not only on me, but on the die-hard, crazy cyclists who still braved the roads all over the Chicago area. Word was out. It wasn't a game any more. That was 5 years ago. Since then, I've been all over the country, hitting areas at random, leaving my grisly signature on roads in every state, and everywhere I've been, brave souls have ventured out on bikes again, to find that drivers give them a wide berth, knowing that any one of them could be me. Bicycles have become a symbol of the growing Anticorporate Movement. It is the beginning of the end for The Twenty. ... Unfortunately, it could also be the end for me. Crouching behind the dumpster, my reverie was shattered by a volley of gunshots clanging deafeningly against the heavy steel. Four of the goons charged my position, concentrating their fire to keep me pinned down. I pulled the pin of one of my grenades and lobbed it into their midst. I heard the blast, yet the gunshots stopped for but a second. The hail of bullets resumed and shadowy figures stirred through the smoke. How many of them were there? And where was I? A sign on the loading dock door confirmed my worst fears: I was in a facility belonging to the Chrysler-Ford General Motors Corporation. The delivery van I took out hadn't chased me in here by happenstance. I'd been set up, and I'd fallen for it! I fired wildly into the smoke, enraged as much at myself as any of the uniformed hooligans out there. How many were there? How many? * TO BE CONTINUED * -- __ / \ Bob Fishell \__/ att!ihlpa!fish