Issue 47 - June 1999

This month sees some substantial upgrades to Ibn Qirtaiba's Web site - the first since 1995 - although they won't be noticeable except to members of the SF SIG. (The SF SIG, for those who came in late, is the SF Special Interest Group of Australian Mensa of which Ibn Qirtaiba is the official publication.)

Behind IQ now lies an SQL database which provides exclusive members-only services and a control panel for them to update their membership details and their access to mailing lists and newsgroups. If you are a member of the SF SIG you will be receiving full details - including your individual username and password for access - within the next couple of weeks. If you are not a member, you are welcome to join at no charge - although you must be a member of Mensa in your home country first.

This issue's contents include a great new short-short by new contributor James Tung, and the conclusion of Frederick Rustam's serial The Wiretappers. By way of poetry, SF SIG members Pavel Boychev and Michele MacGregor have contributed a joint effort entitled Finding Home Again. The featured artist this issue is Matthew Christou, whose fabulous ray-traced starships could almost make you believe they were real. Usually clicking on images in Ibn Qirtaiba will take you to the artist's home page, but as Matt doesn't have a gallery on the Web you will be shown a full-sized version of the image you have clicked on instead.

Enjoy issue 47.

Contents

Short story: I Feel Fuzzy by James Tung

Coolest 10 SF Sites #10

Serial: The Wiretappers, part 2 by Frederick Rustam

Poem: Finding Home Again by C M MacGregor and Pavel Boychev

Short Story: I Feel Fuzzy © 1999 James Tung

"Good evening, Chris."

"Hi, Dan, what's up?"

"Sorry I'm late picking you up... I know you wanted to get home before the hardware store closed. My last meeting of the day ran an hour late."

As the car door slid shut, the car started slowly forward, weaving delicately into traffic. The low whirr of the engine was barely audible behind the beginning babble of the local news broadcast. The car picked up speed.

"That's OK, Dan, I told Marisa that it was an 82% chance that you'd have a late day today, so I think she picked up those pieces I need this afternoon."

"Good thinking! 82%? That's funny, I had calculated 67% myself, but only when I factored in the timing of my boss' flight from Hallah Valley."

"Ha! I tell ya, the 16 degree-of-freedom approach has a lot more accurate predictions. I had a 77% on Frederic being a boy last year, remember? What was it that you had, Dan?"

"54%."

"I should be working on stock predictions instead of doing these data implants. I keep telling them that it's not how much data you have, it's all about using the right data and the right method."

"We've had this discussion a hundred times, Chris! The Richler-Ziemann model is what we use at work and that's widely believed to be the most accurate method ever! How can you honestly dispute the 99.4% prediction of the acceptance of the Kepler model of the solar system? Or the 98.2% prediction of the popularity of The Beatles? And don't forget about Pamela Anderson's third breast enlargements. All it needed was the computing power and the complete data sets - of which we're getting so close to, Chris! So close!" He emphasized his point by striking the dashboard with a closed fist, producing a low thud.

"Okay, okay... I know what your reasons are... regular folks like us still don't have that kind of juice to do it, that's all." He paused for a moment to consider something. "How's it going, by the way? Last time we talked about this, you were talking about a Bible run?"

"We're not that far yet, but the data is looking good. I don't want to get too excited about it though."

"How can you not get excited about discovering the secret of the Bible! The oldest full manuscript that we'll have ever used! Nobody has ever achieved a higher prediction factor of 35.3% on it! Come on, Dan, tell me how far you guys have gotten!!!"

Dan shifted slightly and gripped the console interface tightly, showing the whites of his knuckles. "I don't want to get excited."

"Shit! Dan... Daniel. We've been friends since our first characteristics testing at age four. Our characteristics say we'll be friends until we die! We've gone through our schooling together, our initiations, our marriages, our kids, our jobs, our whole lives! Come on, tell me! Tell me! Is it better than 30%?"

No answer. The radio bubbles a traffic prediction. The car veers left onto a side road.

"Better than 40%?!"

"Maybe."

"Better than 40! Oh, shit! 50%, Dan?"

A smile. The car speeds up. "Keep going."

"60%? You've come 60% to understanding the underlying nature of the Bible, the word of God, of humanity...."

"Better."

"70%?"

....

"80%?"

.....

Dan, Chris and the car stop immediately, without notice, nor a deceleration, from 135 km/hr to 0km/hr, directly in front of a dazzling display of a spectrum of energies, felt as changing colours, disruptions of gravity, pinpricks of pressure all over their bodies, waves of deja vu and an overwhelming sense of insecurity. A bolt of white-hot lightning strikes the hood, showering sparks and jolting long-forgotten memories. White, coherent light beams down onto the car, crystallizing the plastic and metal into a translucent, gel-like matter. The sound of Chris' primal yell distorts into an earth-like murmur and whistle. They are lifted from the weight of gravity and pressure from the thousands of meters of air above them and float gently a few centimeters above their seats.

For a moment, they believe they are dead, while their senses are astounded, but it passes and soon their minds are clear and open to a genius of life that has eluded their livelihoods. They begin to understand the intricate past paths they have studied, and the absolutely beautiful sense that there is more.

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Serial: The Wiretappers, part 2 © 1999 Frederick Rustam

The story so far: Datajacks Mort and Melissa, denied access to the Web - as most of their fellow citizens are by the New Order - audaciously attempted to tap the telcom cable of CRAD cybercop, Seamus McLarge ("Big Mac"), and use his Web authorization to surf. In the basement of Big Mac's apartment house, Mort installed a diverter on the cop's fiber-optic line. While the datajacks were distracted by the arrival of a new intruder, Big Mac discovered their tap and ran for the basement. Alerted, Mort and Melissa narrowly escaped - but after he saw their wirework, Big Mac vowed to capture the skilled, daring tappers.

Slaughtertown

Terminal City was designed as a place where data began and ended.

It was the Terran planetary capital, but even before the advent of the New Order, it was planned as a place of residence only for those who worked for the government. Other workers had to live in the suburbs beyond the last of its circular streets. To accentuate this socio-separation, a Beltway was built in the park beyond Ring Z. It was an eight-lane, limited-access highway pierced with a limited number of tunnels and spanned by a limited number of bridges to conduct groundcar and transit traffic into and out of the capital city.

Beyond the Beltway were the planned residential communities. And sprawling between those were the bidonvilles. These squatter-towns sprang up on undeveloped government land before the ponderous bureaucracy could stop them. Later, official policy was changed to allow them, since Terminal City and its "official" suburbs needed a lot of low-paid labor... The class-name of these towns derived from an ancient language, and originally meant shantytowns whose shacks were covered with discarded, hammered-flat gasoline cans.

It was in two of these unfashionable homes, that Mort and Melissa had been born. They met at their neighborhood's volunteer-school. They developed the same determination to rise above their station in life. And they both became apprentice datajacks by joining the same gang: the Legionnaires.

After the Legion was broken-up by the arrest of most of its members, Mort and Melissa went into business, without incorporation, as Web datajacks and datapeddlers. They accessed the infobahn illegally and hazardously, and swiped data classified NOPUB (NO PUBlic Release, an umbrella classification used by the New Order for anything not considered TOP SECRET and given encrypted protection). They sold this government data, along with confidential commercial data, to parties willing to pay for it.

It was Mort's recurring daydream to discover a way to access the government's TOP SECRET data via the Web. With the big money he could make from selling T/S data, he and Melissa could pay somebody to illegally house them inside the Beltway, where the opportunities for datajacking were better. Few residents of the bidonvilles had PermiPlugs for legal Web access. Those who did were expected to shamelessly snitch for the New Order government.

The PermiPlug... This desired device was a telcomm connector with a built-in data processor, ROMmed into which were a user's personal identification data. Each plug was pumped full of nitrogen and sealed. Opening one caused a vital component in the circuitry to catch fire and burn up in a flash. PermiPlugs could be counterfeited, but not very easily. A PermiPlug was required for legal Web access. Only the New Order elite possessed them.

It was to a sanctuary in the bidonville of Slaughtertown that Mort, Melissa, and Chaka - a homeless memory savant - fled after their unsuccessful attempt to wiretap CRAD Inspector, Seamus McLarge, in his hideaway apartment building.

As they hiked home from the Metro station, Chaka looked around him at the shacks of Slaughtertown, the dusty streets, and the shabbily- dressed residents shuffling by them with minimal animation. He smelled something malodorous in the hazy air, and signed to Melissa about it.

"He wants to know if the smell is from a slaughterhouse," she said to her boyfriend, smiling. "He's a city-guy. He's never been outside the Beltway."

"Tell him the old slaughterhouse has been closed for years. That's the Dump he's smelling."

Mort made a note to investigate the background of the homeless Mem before the government's Special Memory Administration - MemorAD - could locate Chaka, and also grab Mort and Melissa for conspiracy to conceal a CC, a Controlled Citizen. That would bring them years in a Re-ed Camp, not to mention separation from each other.

Slaughtertown was located on land formerly used for a sanitary landfill, and near Public Incinerator No. 3. The smoke from the latter's tall stacks was thin, but omnipresent. The changing wind carried it into every part of the town, denying nobody its acrid odor. The idealistic composting stations of the capital's early years had failed to keep up with its trash and garbage, and had been largely replaced by older, cheaper technologies.

Living atop the former landfill had its dangers, too. Methane gas from the covered, but decomposing, trash and garbage seeped upward into the shacks, awaiting only a flame or spark to set it off. It was now well-known in Slaughtertown that a mixture of 8% methane and 92% air turned any enclosed space into a big bomb.

"To Grandmother's house we go," Mort sang out cheerfully, even though he was still smarting from his failed datajack operation at Big Mac's apartment building, and the loss of his wiretap/diverter in his haste to escape the wrathful cybercop. He knew he'd always be welcome and reasonably secure at Grandma Drago's - unless he went online from there. His fingerprints and DNA were not on record; few bidonvillers had been so recorded. But he knew that Seamus would be waiting for him to return to the apartment house on Ring T for another try at his datajack's revenge.

"Keep waiting, Seamus. I'll be back," he declared.

The Investigation

Inspector McLarge read his tech's report on his office terminal's screen. It was negative: no match for the fingerprints and DNA that were recovered from his apartment house's basement. He mumbled as he scanned the black-on-white words of government-standard display.

"Bidonvillers, I'll bet... And that's where they've gone to ground." "But which one?" There were 137 sizeable bidonvilles spread around the periphery of Terminal City.

He was frustrated by not having any data about the two perps. He continued reading the tech's report, but prepared himself for a disappointment... He didn't receive it.

"EXAMINATION OF THE ILLEGAL BASEMENT LIVING-AREA IN A STOREROOM, HOWEVER, HAS REVEALED THE IDENTITY OF ITS HOMELESS OCCUPANT." McLarge perked up. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"MEMORAD RECORDS IDENTIFY..." ("A Mem!") "...DNA RECOVERED FROM THE LIVING-AREA AS BELONGING TO CONTROLLED CITIZEN CHAKA BOLTON: MALE, TWELVE YEARS OF AGE, DEAF/MUTE, ORPHANED OF CIVIL-SERVANT PARENTS... [etc.] ESCAPED MEMORAD ACADEMY NO. 1 ON 4 JULY 34. WHEREABOUTS ARE UNKNOWN."

"No 1, eh?... He must be a first-class Mem. I wonder why MemorAD hasn't caught him, by now? Don't all Mems have implants?" He made a mental note to do some research.

Now he knew there were three fugitives from his basement. No datajack would dare live there. But a desperate, homeless Mem would.

A hyperlink in the text took McLarge to an institutional portrait of Chaka Bolton. The cybercop copied the photo to slickpaper. As he was trimming it from the sheet with a pair of scissors to slide it into a plastisleeve of his wallet, he addressed it as if the Mem it depicted were here facing him.

"Son, you're going to lead me to those datajacks. I know you left with 'em, so I'm going to find you, first. That should be easy." All I have to do is post you onto the secret Web site for suburban snitches, and they'll deliver you to me tied with a red ribbon. Then, we'll see about finding your two datajack pals."

His desperate surmise about Chaka's accompaniment with Mort and Melissa in their sudden flight was a stab in the dark - but was, unfortunately for the datajacks, quite correct.

Grandma's Place

"Morton! Where've you been? I've been worried sick about you... Did you take Melissa into the city, again?... Who's this boy?"

Mort, Mellisa, and Chaka were thus welcomed by Mort's grandmother to her Slaughtertown shack. Formerly the home of Mort's deceased parents, it was a roomy, unusually-well-built bungalow. On the outside, it looked as run-down as the others, but only because Mort's father, a master carpenter, had purposely designed it that way to discourage the local burglars. Inside, it was as clean and well-kept as any elite Ring-H Terminal City townhouse. It had electricity, telcom, and indoor plumbing ending in a septic tank.

The trio settled in, and Melissa began teaching Chaka the tricks of datajacking, using Mort's handheld - as well as she could without actually having Web access for demonstration... Mort soon began working on that access deficiency. His effort started with a coded knock on the front door, after supper.

"Hey! You made it back from Ringtown!" Mort opened the door to find his fellow datajack, William "Bad-Billy" Saunders. The older jack was carrying a wrapped package, carefully, as if it contained something valuable - a rarity in Slaughtertown.

"We almost didn't make it back, man! It was wild! We almost zinged Big Mac - but I slipped, and he came after us. Almost got us, too." Mort was dying to relate the exciting tale to his friend. But, as usual, Billy's first priority was to show his friend something new he had obtained.

"Later, Morty... You gotta see this." Billy looked around at the other occupants of Grandma's. "Where can we go? This is really hot stuff." Mort shrugged his shoulders at Melissa and took the visitor into a back room.

Billy set the package on a nightstand and began unwrapping it. "You're gonna love this, Morty-boy." With a flourish, he tore off the last wrapping.

"Oh, wow!" exclaimed Mort.

"What'd I tell ya?" grinned Billy. "It's a real, working radiola."

A RadioWeb device... Selected elitists of the New Order were issued portable computers with built-in radio transceivers. Each of these devices had a socket for its owner's PermiPlug. Anyone with a plugged RadioWeb box could access the Web from almost anywhere. Recv/Xmit transceivers hung from streetlamp poles all around Terminal City, and were mounted on tall cellphone towers in the suburbs. Needless to say, it was highly dangerous to possess one of these "radiolas," illegally.

"An R/W box!" Mort exulted, then he gained control of his enthusiasm and squinted suspiciously at Billy. "Where did you get this?"

"It's a long story," began Bad-Billy, boastfully. "But it boils down to this: the VIP who owned it came out here from Ringtown to play with the girlies - you know, the young ones in Sadie's Place. And on the way back, he wrecked his groundcar. Some guys looted it, and set it on fire to cover the theft. The CRAP cops didn't come around looking for this radiola, so it found its way to me."

Mort was concerned about his friend's latest acquisition. Billy was the best datajack in Slaughtertown - maybe in any suburb. But with this stolen RadioWeb box, he was playing with fire.

"Come on, Billy... Do you know for sure this box doesn't have a transponder in it that squawks its ID in response to a radioprobe from OmniMAX?"

Billy defended his valuable possession. "Naw. There's no 'sponder in this box. I jacked the specs from the manufacturer." He stroked the black box about the size of a laptop. Then, as if to minimize Mort's anxiety, he opened the unit and pulled up its small whip antenna.

"Don't turn that thing on here, man!" shouted Mort. Billy smirked at Mort. "Just showin' you the works, Morty. You aren't afraid of this here little beauty, are you?"

"You're damned right I am," snapped the normally unshakable Mort. "Even if doesn't have a 'sponder, its registration has probably been cancelled by OmniMAX. Transmit with it, and you pinpoint yourself for CRAD to come a-running."

"I know that. I wasn't born yesterday, you know." Billy frowned, then smiled, wickedly. "But let's give it a try, and see." The R/W was burning a hole in his self-control. He just had to try it out. He'd waited long enough to show it to Mort. Now he was going to use it, come what may.

Mort thought for a few seconds. He'd never seen a RadioWeb box in operation. "Okay. But let's take it somewhere safer to try it out: the Dump."

"Yo!... She's charged-up and ready for action." Billy closed the box and rewrapped it. As they headed for the front door, Melissa stopped them.

"Where are you going with that device you're trying to hide, Billy?" Her sixth sense told her that he'd had finally come into possession of the R/W device he'd often talked about.

Mort spoke for his pal. "Honey, we're going to the Dump to try it out. You can come if you want to," he said, hoping she would decline his invitation. This was dangerous business. Melissa was a good datajack, but sometimes she was too cautious for Mort's taste.

Melissa ignored the invitation. "Don't spend too much time on-air. OmniMAX may have that box's number on its Stolen List, and CRAD can find you pretty quick if it is. Radio stuff's not like wiretapping, you know. They can D/F you in seconds."

"No way." asserted Billy. "It's too early for listing this unit. Besides, I'm gonna change the registration to a legal account - as soon as I can find one."

"Oh, sure. You'll just open up its PermiPlug and change the ID data inside it," replied Melissa, sourly.

"I know somebody who can do that," boasted Billy. "Don't fret, Babes." He turned to Mort. "Time's awastin' Morty."

The two datajacks headed for the Dump with their new toy.

"You boys watch out. The Dump's a dangerous place," cautioned Grandma.

At the Dump

Twilight had brought an end to operations at the active area of Sanitary Landfill No. 3, close-on to Slaughtertown. The last loads of trash and rotting garbage had been tipped from the truck ramps, and awaited organization by the forces of public sanitation.

"God, the smell. I'll never get used to it," declared Mort, wrinkling his nose.

He and his fellow datajack, Bad-Billy Saunders, stood at the edge of the current trench, on newly-covered refuse. They were not alone. Down in the trench, trash-pickers from Slaughtertown were sorting through the newly-tipped piles. The two datajacks were ignored by these desperate citizens. Billy spread an old blanket on the ground for them and his precious RadioWeb box.

"You spend too much time in Ringtown, Morty," he said.

"That's where the action is," replied Mort.

"Not this evening," said Billy, with finality.

He opened his black box, raised its antenna, and prepared to turn the unit on.

"I wish we could do this from down in the trench. I feel too exposed, up here," said Mort. In the distance, he could clearly see the night lights of Terminal City - "Ringtown" to his irreverent friend.

"We couldn't acquire a transceiver station from down there," Billy asserted. "Okay, are you ready for some big Web access?"

"Fire it up, Billy-boy."

Billy pushed the R/W's power switch. The box booted-up and logged onto the Web, without further intervention. The wreck victim's start page appeared on the screen.

"Jeez - it's CRAP City! Who was that guy?" he pondered, referring to the former owner of the black box.

The colorful CRAD homepage greeted them. "WELCOME TO C-R-A-D. HOW MAY WE ASSIST YOU, SIR?" inquired the site's vox. Mort grabbed Billy's shoulder to warn him against replying, flippantly. But Billy disabled the unit's voice-input. The R/W switched to keyboard-input mode.

Billy's customary smirk was gone. "The guy who owned this must have been a big time CRAP artist," he joked. "But who cares? This is an invitation to explore CRAP's homesite. I accept. I think I'll send some provocative email, then slap a colorful F/U banner across the intro page."

"Come on, man! Don't do anything stupid. Just surf and leave. CRAD's site is probably loaded with cracker detectors and other bad stuff."

"Chicken," snorted Billy.

Mort waved his arms and clucked, and they both had a loud - but nervous - laugh.

Seamus McLarge's terminal beeped while he was watching an old crime televideo in his pajamas. He lazily switched the terminal's display to his TV screen. It displayed, in big shadowed letters,

EMERGENCY CALL FROM OMNIMAX.

The cybercop said, "Terminal: voice mode... Whatcha got, MAX?"

A stylized representation of OmniMAX appeared. The terminal's vox sounded the big computer's words as its display echoed them on the TV screen.

"ILLEGAL USE OF A RADIOWEB UNIT DETECTED. UNIT REPORTED LOST AFTER GROUNDCAR ACCIDENT OF CRAD OFFICIAL."

"Display location map."

OmniMAX sent a small-scale map of the city and its surrounding suburbs. A red dot flashed outside the Beltway.

"Zoom in... Zoom... Zoom... Stop." He stared at the brown landmark streets, overlayed by the green radiotriangulation bearing-lines. As did the ancient Inspector Javert, Big Mac cried out in triumph.

"I knew it!" He added, "It's Slaughtertown - datajack territory."

His intense urge to collar his would-be tormentors led him to make a risky, but correct, assumption.

"It's the basement gang, alright. Only someone who'd tap my telcom cable would use a stolen RadioWeb box - and so soon afterward, too. Max: dispatch a radiopatrol aircar from CRAD, and have them stop at my apartment building." The computer replied, "COMPLYING."

McLarge ran for his bedroom, shedding his pajamas as he went.

Radio Silence

"Billy, don't." warned Mort. His talented but reckless friend was composing a flaming email to be left in Big Mac's mailbox.

"Sorry, Mort. You failed to zing him. It's my turn, now."

Mort looked around, anxiously, as if he expected CRAD cops might be falling silently from the sky in parachutes. He scanned the horizon in the direction of Terminal City. He listened for aircar sounds, but he heard only the clink of trash being sorted in the trench by the pickers.

"You've probably already set off several alarms, Billy. Pull out now, before they triangulate your precious box... What are you writing?"

"I'm sending Big Mac an anonymous warning about his telcom cables." He chuckled at his own daring, but Mort failed to see the humor.

"Please don't. Seamus may have put some of your probable words on OmniMAX's Watchlist. Even if nothing else does, that'll set off an alarm." He took another look around him.

"Okay, Morty-boy. I'll use run-of-the-mill vulgarity."

"Hurry up. You've been online with that box too long, already."

In the patrol aircar, Inspector McLarge looked at the console map and decided they were close enough to the Slaughtertown landfill to unleash his secret weapon. He sought to arrive at the triangulation point just about the time his spider was doing its damage. He keyed his mike.

"Max: activate Black Widow. Repeat, activate Black Widow."

There was no need for a repeat, however. The computer ran a special security program, inputing the coordinates of the illegal R/W unit. The supervenomous cyberspider was routed to CRAD's radio-access facility and promptly transmitted as a short program datastream to Bad-Billy's new box - piggybacked secretly onto the CRAD homesite's data-transmission carrier wave.

"This'll fix 'em, good," declared McLarge to the other cybercops. "They won't be using that damn radiola again." The others smiled. They'd never heard of Black Widow, but they knew about security spiders, and they guessed this one was pure poison for their quarry.

Billy was so absorbed in his work at the smelly Dump, he failed to notice the new odor of burning electronics... But Mort did.

"The box! It's smoking!"

"What the hell!" Billy belatedly realized he was in trouble.

Mort quickly scanned the sky. Now, he saw the aircar marker lamps almost lost in the brighter lights of Terminal City. The craft was coming toward them nap-of-the-earth, at top speed.

"CRAD cops!" he yelled.

Billy mistakenly glanced around for approaching vehicles. There were none. He returned his attention to the keyboard, determined to save his precious RadioWeb unit by shutting it down.

"I can't turn it off," he discovered, to his surprise.

"Leave it! They've spidered us!" Mort took another look at the approaching aircar lights, and screamed, "Aircar! Run!" as he leaped into the landfill's new trench... That hurt.

He picked himself up and frantically sought a place to hide. With luck, the aircar cops might not have spotted him, yet. He looked for Billy, but his fellow datajack was still up on the plateau.

The trashpickers in the wide trench noticed him, though. They had stopped sorting and were poised for flight. What they were doing wasn't illegal - but when cops showed up, they ran.

"Cops!" Mort yelled. They scattered like trash rats at a gunshot.

He found an overhang of newly-tipped refuse, ducked under it, and wormed himself into the smelly stuff beneath it, leaving only a hole for air. The odor was gagging, but he managed to keep his supper down while he listened for further developments.

He heard the loud sounds of an aircar landing. Masked by the noise of the whirling rotor, Billy's voice could be heard yelling abuse at the cops. Then, the aircar took off and circled over the area. Below it were a multitude of additional suspects, running hither and yon.

After circling, Inspector McLarge gave up trying to figure out which one of them might have made the other footprints at the scene of the crime. The patrol unit flew off to the downtown CRAD complex.

"I'll get him, later." He smiled and looked at Bad-Billy Saunders, who was bound and gagged. "You'll tell me - won't you, boyo."

Mort waited for almost an hour, in case the patrol had left a couple of cybercops to quietly search for a hider like him. When he emerged from his hole, he found himself all alone in the landfill trench. He gazed up at the starry night sky and clasped his hands.

"Thank you, Lord." He wasn't very religious, but this was a kind of battlefield situation. He recalled an old quotation: "There are no atheists in the tranches." This recollection made him laugh aloud, until caution got the better of him. "Escaping CRAD twice in one week... Not bad," he whispered to himself.

As he walked out of the soggy morass, he spooked the real trash rats that had emerged their holes after the ruckus, and they scampered away from his carefree footfalls.

Kaboom!

When Mort reached Grandma's house, he found only a pile of splintered wood, surrounded on all sides by the badly-damaged shacks of her neighbors.

He stood in shock for awhile, then approached one of those picking through the ruins.

"What the hell happened?!" He knew the answer.

The man pointed to what was left of Mort's only home in Slaughtertown.

"Gas explosion," he said. "Got some of my place, too."

His face a mask of anguish, Mort inquired about the former residents of the house his father had built so soundly, the one that was now only scrap lumber and kindling.

"That was your place, wasn't it?" replied the neighbor, gravely. He added, "There wasn't anybody there when it went. I don't know where they were, but they sure were lucky to be away when the place blew up."

"Yeah..." Mort was in a daze. After a few hours in safe suburbia, his friend had been arrested, he had been soaked with garbage - and he, his girlfriend, his grandmother, and Chaka Bolton, had all been made homeless.

The neighbor sniffed, and asked, tactlessly, "What happened to you? Smells like you fell off a collection wagon."

In Slaughtertown, refuse was collected by a horse-drawn wagon driven by community volunteers. Backward as that seemed to newcomers, it was considered "appropriate technology" by town residents. Collection trucks were for the "official" suburbs. The only reason the town had volunteers for this distasteful work was that it allowed those doing it first-crack at the refuse. Some of them almost got rich collecting trash. Rich by bidonville standards, that is.

Mort's thoughts were of Melissa, Grandma, and Chaka - in that order. Where had they gone to, before the explosion?... Where could he go, now... ("Melissa's parents' place. They have to be there.")

Dirty, smelly, weary, he set off for the Mawn place.

Mort was correct about the temporary abode of his "family." They were crowded into the Mawn household. Grandma wept to see her grandson.

"Oh, Morton! It's all gone!" she cried. "Everything your father built for us." She embraced Mort.

"What happened? Where did you go before the bang?" he asked Melissa.

"Grandma took us to church. Chaka wanted to go; he's never been to one of those places, before. MemorAD doesn't allow its charges any religious influences... I guess we were sent there by divine intervention," she grinned. "Or something."

"We'll need some more of it, then. CRAD arrested Billy. I got away - I think."

She sniffed him. "What did you jump into?"

"My future," he replied, gloomily. She understood. "And Billy...?"

"He'll talk. He knows about our operation in Seamus's basement. He'll use that knowlege to make things easier for himself." Mort looked chastened, and sought advice from his savvy girlfriend. "What do we do now, Babes?"

"You take a bath. Then, we'll talk about it."

"I'm gonna to get Seamus for this," he declared, grimly.

"No, Mort," replied Melissa as she pulled him past the wrinkled noses of the enlarged Mawn household, toward the bathroom.

"He's going to get you - sooner or later."

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Poem: Finding Home Again © 1999 C M MacGregor and Pavel Boychev

Raindrops keep falling on my head
Waiting for the grass to grow
The mud is cool on hot feet
But both my hearts beat slow

An icy nitrogen wind makes
The crystalline trees crackle
As I leave behind my outer skin
The chill forces me to cackle

Making scratches on my body
Needle-like snow begins to stab
Life fluid pools around the wounds
While I rush to hide in a cab

I stare at the humans there
Even stranger than the holos show
They are bigger and look stronger
Their coverings eeriely...glow

One of the human creatures
Takes a tentative step forward
As I move behind in panic
My lips utter the Fourth Word

At once, all around fades out
Transported to another time and place
Double suns glow a lemon yellow
As the eyes of my parental triplet's face

Loneliness and grief overcome me
My Mai... my Dau... my Cin...
A bid for status in the hierarchy
Has something changing deep within

My body begins its deformation
All eyes pop outward as in surprise
Adult transformation begins
Such a price for a much wanted prize

It finishes, I leave for home
Safely using all the sacred WORDS
The triplet awaits my arrival
Mai, Dau, Cin, raising their swords

Saluting smartly they anticipate
The choice my transformation now directs
For being only one of three
To complete my triplet, I must elect

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