From pyramid!decwrl!ucbvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!ihlpa!fish Mon Mar 13 10:24:03 PST 1989 * PRELUDE * [American life in the Year 2000 is not what the futurists of the late Twentieth Century had predicted. With the Western economy nearly wrecked by the remorseless profiteers of the Corporatist era, conditions are sometimes harsh, problems and unrest abound, and a fledgeling Government struggles to steer America back to a course of prosperity and growth. Times are hard, but improving. In many ways, it is a better world. Most Sundays, bicyclists ride freely up and down the streets and avenues of American cities, secure in the knowledge that they are no longer flirting with suicide. Optimism abounds as the new Millenium approaches. People have grown kinder, more tolerant, even happy. Most people, that is. In the year 2000, one man cannot forgive the lowly cyclist for getting in his way. Another cannot forgive himself. Fate is to bring them together.] * PROLOGUE * (The smell of the new upholstery exhilerated him. With a lot of people out of work, it meant something to drive a new car. It was not just a cheap little econo-crate, either; this was a top-of-the-line mini-van, with a V-6, air conditioning, stereo, power windows, the works. He drove out of the congested city into the abandoned roads south of town. This would be a good place to open it up, see what it could do now that it was broken in. Just over the hill and .. NO! Just his luck, a goddamn bicycle. One of those arrogant wimps who were responsible for those spineless bleeding-hearts in Washington. Things had been good when the Corporatists were in charge; there was money, and you could buy a new car every couple of years. Now he had to work a second job just to make the payments on this fine machine. He followed the bike at a distance until the shoulder of the road gave way to a bridge abutment. That would be the place. Okay, you little bastard, it's pay-back time. He pushed the accelerator to the floor...) * PART ONE * I lay on the shoulder of a dusty Texas road, my feet hopelessly tangled in the toe straps of my wrecked bike. My arms felt like lead. E. J. Ross towered over me, his great bulk quivering as he laughed. "Gonna whup yo' ass, boy. Teach y'all to fool with me!" E. J. moved closer, reached for me. I managed, lamely, to get an arm raised, and I tried to throw a punch at his jaw. My fist drifted slowly through the air, barely dented the pudgy flesh of his jowls, and fell back. I could not raise it again. So weak... E. J. gripped my shoulders in two ham-like fists and pulled my face close to his. His breath stank of whiskey. He was no longer laughing. He squeezed my skull against his forehead and I felt my head begin to split. I could not breathe. I could see nothing but his eyes. "Gonna whup yo' ass, boy." --- I awoke with stifled scream lodged in my throat. My pillow was drenched. The chill air of the cabin impinged on my awareness as I lay among knotted bedclothes tossed askew in the night. Shivering, I turned the pillow over and pulled a heavy quilt up around my neck. My head hurt. After a while, sleep returned. E. J. Ross did not. A beam of morning sunlight glinted from the half-empty Jack Daniels bottle next to the bed. The cabin was awash in daylight, terribly bright, driving needles into my eyes. I sat up groggily and reached for the jug, for the hair of the dog. Raising it to my lips, I was seized by a pang of revulsion as the peppery-sweet fragrance bit my nostrils. I hurled the bottle into the fireplace, where it shattered and fell among the other shards of glass there. I regretted the gesture immediately, for the whiskey stench now flooded the room. After a few agonized moments, I rose to my feet. A light June snow had fallen in the night. With the bright sunshine, it would be gone by mid-morning, and by noon, I would be able to split wood outdoors without a shirt on. Such weather was not uncommon in the Canadian Rockies, but even after nineteen months, I had not grown indifferent to the unpredictability of this place. It helped to mark the passage of time -- time which was too slowly healing the wounds of a life ended under the streets of Detroit back in '98. The day's first coherent thoughts returned to that night, as they often did. Another morning, another day's life drawn on a bankrupt account. I didn't deserve to live. Sitting there alone in the mine, I tried to recall how many men I'd killed since I awoke only that morning. I'd lost count. Multiply that uncertainty by five years and it added up to a load of guilt which could be expunged by death alone. It was the right time, the right place to die. But I did not want to die. I'd had the better part of an hour to work with the mine computer. It took little time for me to activate one of the conveyers which carried salt to the surface, half a mile above. After completing the last entry in Spike Bike's diaries, I prepared my escape. To lighten the bike as much as possible, I removed all the heavy armament, keeping only the grenades and my 9mm Walther automatic. I then donned a dust mask and hefted the bike and myself into one of the hoppers. At precisely 9:30 PM, as I had instructed the computer, the conveyer lurched to life and I began the painfully slow ascent. When I emerged , I had but ten minutes to get away. I used the remaining grenades to blast the conveyor tunnel I'd used to escape, hoping to contain a bit more of the radiation from the impending nuclear blast. Then I jumped on the bike, pointed it at the main gate, and sprinted away. Fortunately, I ran into no resistance. Senator Crisp must have been successful at evacuating the area. I got, perhaps, two miles from the mine entrance when a brilliant flash lit up the sky. A moment later, the pavement buckled violently and I was thrown into the air. I landed hard on the broken asphalt. I looked back towards the mine, half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud, but I saw only the glow of scattered fires. The flash I'd seen had been merely the result of a transformer explosion. It was over. Ames Morgan's plot had been foiled; what was to have been a major nuclear disaster had become a second-rate earthquake. The bike had landed hard enough to collapse the back wheel. It was totaled, and I was not far from being totaled myself. I hadn't broken any major bones, but my left wrist was sprained, and the bullet wound I'd received in my shoulder earlier had long since opened up, oozing blood down the front of my flak jacket. I armed the plastique charge in the bike's down tube, tossed the bike into the culvert, and simply walked away. When the radio-linked heart monitor I wore was out of range of the bike's receiver, the charge went off, rendering the evidence of my survival to slivers. Spike Bike was dead. In the pandemonium following the blast, it was easy to slip across the border into Ontario. I had discarded my remaining weapons, keeping only my Canadian papers and some cash. Some time early Tuesday morning, Michael Resnick, of Caroline, Alberta, Canada, checked into a Windsor hospital and slept for two days. The doctors did not challenge my story about getting my injuries in a gas line explosion, although I don't think they believed it, either. In any case, I was discharged after a few days, to make my way to the only home I had left, taking the only identity I had left. Michael Resnick was born April 17, 1965, in Vancouver, B.C. He died of severe birth defects on April 18. He had been my cousin. His birth certificate was among the effects my mother inherited when Michael's parents died in a plane crash in '67. I used it to obtain other Canadian documents, including a passport and driver's license. I established the Resnick identity during the years I fought the Act. Canadian citizenship made it easier for me to move around north of the border and helped to cover Spiro Bikopoulis's movements. To the Canadian government, Michael Resnick was a geologist, a mining consultant who spent most of his time in the States. But that was just for the benefit of the authorities, and the bankers and lawyers in Calgary. The people of the little town of Caroline, Alberta, where I kept my post office box, didn't care what I did for a living. I was just a hermit who came down from the mountains only to get whiskey and supplies. I'd have to go this day, as that jug I'd smashed had been my last. I didn't get drunk every night. Why, just two weeks before, I'd gone to bed after only a couple of good ones. Well, maybe three. It's not that I needed the booze. It just helped to dim the stares of a hundred dead men. I could handle the rest of it, memories of the flames, the twisted metal, even the blood. It was just those damned _eyes_. * TO BE CONTINUED * --- [In case you were wondering: In the final installment of "Armageddon in Detroit," Spike removed the Bomb from his rear rack after he reached the mine's control center. Why would he do that if he didn't intend to ride the bike any more? How many of you caught on? Fish] -- __ / \ Bob Fishell \__/ att!ihlpa!fish