Bad Company

Bad Company

I stared into it's cold blue eyes as it scanned me up and down. It weaves its out stretched neck around my bike eying J.J. in the side car carefully. She sticks out he tongue as a response.

“Pppphhhbtt!”

The machine does not respond. It's a SR7800 Border Guard. Equipped with a 180 caliber Pendelton barrel, with armor piercing shells. It has hyper sensitive optical X-rays and can detect 1.800,000,000 viral codes. It's a relic from the Code Wars, the Company should replace them. Who would dare attack Soni-Metro.

Soni-Metro is the largest Company town in the entire southwest. It is the South West. Not to mention home of Soni-Alpha, the second largest mega-corp on Earth. I'm a Soni-Boy, a old fashioned code runner. One of the last. J.J.'s my sister and my partner.

“Identity verified.” it says. The 7800 retracts its face into the wall and the city gates slowly open.

“'Bout time, I thought we'd be here all year!” J.J. mumbles-she hates waiting.

This is the Northern part of town. A hundred years ago this was what was called L.A. What little is left of that time is all around us. Ruins of a by-gone era. Before the Corporate Wars of '87 and the destruction of Federal America. Now International Mega-Corps control everything except the Badlands out East and the fabled Free Country far beyond that. Theres nothing in the Badlands to control, the weather makes it impossible terrain.

We ride past a gang of Dead Boys, silicon rockers, refugees of the past. Wanna be rock stars, hard wired full of meta-dope. I nod and flash them my heat. They snarl and one of them tosses me the finger. Everyone hates code runners, even wastoids. Everyone except the Company. That's why we can go anywhere in the city we like. Including Soni-Tower West, which is where we're headed. I tun on the gas. We should get three mil for this run. Chump change really, I know, but J.J.'s gotta eat. I run code to stay alive. I'm not built for anything else. Sonio owns my system. One day I hope to buy it back, take J.J. to the North East, see if Free Country's real out there in the wilderness. If not....

I pull up to the entrance of the tower, my dusty Akira 900 reflecting in the giant glass doors. I look up at the demon stretching up into the smog. 245 stories of Soni glory. Inside are over a billion employees carefully controlling the entire South West of Soni-America. I take the bike up to the parking deck on the 140^th floor. It's as far as they'll let J.J. get. Machines didn't trust humans anymore. I park my bike and tell J.J. to stay put. She has a tendency to run off.

“I know, I know, I'm almost 15 you know.”, she gripes. Shit! Was I getting old? How long had it been, I thought? I sold myself to Soni when I was 15 to help protect J.J. from logo-traders. She was barely five then. God had ten years past since I could... I should upgrade before our next run. Carrying all this code was starting to take it's tole. My brain was full I had to get up stairs. I was still the best though. Sonio310 Xr model built to run.

No old 7800 checks me as I hop on the elevator and push the button for the top floor. The building itself scans me the whole things alive. Employees mill about as Company vids flash on the wals. I watch a new music vid by one of the Company artist. Electro-shock-punks in pinstripe holo suits. Retro is all the rage in Japan these days. I don't care for music anymore, I just drink my synthohol and run their damn code.

I step out of the elevator into a board room. An enormous sterile white room. No satellite can penetrate it. My O.S. always funny in here. I stand at the far end of the only thing in the room, a 200 ft. black marble table (no chairs). The board members appear from the floor. Their heads bob and whirl as they stare silently at me. Synthoid attendants sulk about in their black robes making necessary adjustments to keep their frail parts working and whats left of them alive. Some of the older members date back to pre-merger. The CEO blinks slowly his eyes seem as cold and lifeless as the silicon detectors on the border guard.

“Do you (wheeze) have (wheeze) our product (wheeze) Mr. James.”, he says, as attendants rush to pump chemicals into his dying body. I nod as I eject the disk from the back of my neck. I put the disk into a slot on the table. A holo screen appears above the table. Endless code feeds down. The board members all nod their clunky square heads, vaguely smiling. I have no idea what it says I just run code I can't read it. All I know is that it's worth a lot of money, so I ask for mine.

“My pay?”

“Two million credits are being processed to your account as we speak Mr. James.”, one of them spits out.

“2, this is worth 3 easy!”, fucking stiffs! I should unplug these bastards right now, these attendants couldn't stop me.

“You will except our payment or we will delete you Mr. James”

“This is highway robbery.” I mumble under my breathe. I knew they'd shit me, they always do.

“Thank you (wheeze)that ( wheeze) will be all Mr. James.” I accept my credits and walk out, tripping one of their attendants on my way out.

“We will contact you soon.” one of them says, with a smile that would turn my stomach if I still had one.

“Yeah, you do that!” I say flipping them the bird as the elevator doors shut.

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Now playing: Dynamite Mine - Murder By Death
via FoxyTunes

On Love, Loyalty, and Respect (part 1)

ON LOVE, LOYALTY, AND RESPECT

Treatise I
On Love,

Love is a many splintered thing. There are many types of love in this world. The love of a boy and his dog, the love of a brother to a sister, the love of a mother to a child. There is the love of child to a toy, a adult to their vehicle, and even the love of man to a machine. There is the love shared between friends, the love shared between enemies. There is the love of two people who have never met in physical reality, and the love of two people who have never even met yet believe in their minds they are united. Then there is the love of two beings involved in sexual congress. The genuine and en genuine connection denoted when two beings experience an emotional bond. Love is rumored to take on many shapes. From the one sided or uneven compulsions toward another, to mutual co-dependency, to shared joys and rapture. Love can be beautiful and wondrous to painful and empty. Those who become enamored and entranced under the effects of the emotion to the point of dramatically affecting their psyche are said to have”fallen in love”. Examine the phrase carefully. To “fall” is to move from a inclined position to a reclined or declined position. To go from being upright to prone. Meaning if you were to fall you could either possibly fall backward onto the back of your skull risking injury to ones brain, or forward risking injury to ones face. Which depending on which one you use more could cause great damage to ones life and livelihood. It has been witnessed that those who are considered in love will modify their behavior to suit the need of the object of their affections. While this may prove positive only in so log as both or all parties are in agreement and all involved remain “in love”. When one party is further “in love” than the other, the relationship can be seen clearly as uneven. Conflict arises and nothing good can come of the matter. Those in uneven relationships on both sides are prone to rash judgments and actions. Delusions of faithfulness and honesty can cause parties to have other emotions excited and dangerous tendencies awoken. It is said that love will cause one to do strange things. Persons “in love”, have been known to become violent when other wise docile. Persons “in love”, have been witnessed to go to great lengths to subdue the object of their feelings. Many wars have been fought, and many lives have been lost to this feeling. At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, I ask you first; What is a feeling? What is an emotion? Are they merely chemical responses in the brain. The stimulation of pleasure responses/ Or, the firing of random synapses in a particular region of the muscle mass known as the brain. Science claims that the same neurons excited by love are excited by chocolate. Can love be reduced to this description? Can romantic desire be equated with eating a chocolate bar? If so, then what of inhaling the ground leaf of the same plant? The nut of the Coca plant is used to make candy for young children. He rest of the plant is used primarily as nose candy for adults. Melted down and wrapped in aluminum foil you can experience the exstacy of love for pocket change. What then of the processed leaf placed on glass and inhaled through straws or dollar bills? Many intoxicated on the drug claim to experience the same euphoric highs and lows associated with those in the throws of “love”. The symptoms of love-struck individuals can easily be trade with that of some one who is said to be lost to the effects of cocaine. Humans are the only animals to experience the emotion of love. Animals of the four-legged ilk, display certain mating rituals that could be construed as love, but fall more in the category of loyalty. We as humans believe that all things big and small must be given names and descriptions. Dating back to the biblical myth of Adam naming all the inhabitants of the garden, mankind has sought to label everything he sees, hears, or feels. It is possible that through the ages certain terms have been misused and misconstrued. It is through these ill advised names we refer to our life experiences. Yet, do any of us know what love is? We have our notions, which vary from person to person depending on how one developed over ones life span. Each individual has his or her idea of what constitutes as love. Is there a true solid definition beyond the text book explanation? Can we ever truly know if love is real or simply a candy bar? Through out time mankind has written countless songs,poems, and stories trying to capture the essence of love. More often than not the authors simply capture the essence of romance. And romantic notions are a completely other examination.

There's alot of shit in the yard.

I haven't had much time to follow up on my last two post about Paris, but now I don't really feel the need to say much more. I was outraged as (as were many people) about the complete blatant travesty going on and the whole farce that she was let out of jail in the first place. If I cried every time I was in the back of a cop car I'd have no tears left. I was relived to see her thrown back in though. This whole thing has said a lot about our society. Nothing that someone who has been in jail as much as I have didn't already know though. I am glad to see the major media finally excepting some of the blame in all this. It is after all us and them that made her famous for doing nothing. There was actually a guy on Fox News-of all places-saying that they'll stop reporting on her when we stop watching so it's up to you and me to turn our backs on these needless celebutaunts and set our sites on much more important issues. There are more pressing issues being over looked as the nation pays attention to the travails of some rich skinny bitch. Believe it or not!

Such as the racist debate oer immigration reform, or the anti-Bush riots happening in Italy. The missing girl found in a Connecticut closet, or the dead one in Kansas. Of course this too says a lot about our country since i doubt the Kansas girl would have meant anything if she wasn't "scrubbed in sunshine" or the picture of an "All-American Girl". The Connecticut case may fade sooner though because it's beginning to look like the 15-year old girl there was a willing participant in some home-made porno. The big thing we all need to be up in arms over however is the fact that Fred Thompson (the actor/Senator/potential presidential nominee) is calling for the President to Pardon ole' Scooter Libby. Whom if you recall was the top aide to Dick Cheney convicted of lying to a Federal Grand Jury and last week sentenced to two plus years in Club Fed. Well if things go his way he may get less time than Paris and that's a much bigger travesty of justice. If there was a pseudo-celebrity trail to follow it should be the Phil Spector murder case. I don't know how many of you have been following this on Court-TV, but that mother-fucker is guilty- he killed that bitch! If he gets off because he produced a few records in the sixties then I think riots are in order. Hell! I just think riots are in order anyway. I mean regardless of the minor stuff, we still have the illegal Iraq War on our hands. The possibility of conflict with Iran. Thanks to idiots like Joe Lieberman calling for action. We have hundreds still being illegally detained in Gitmo and that secret Brooklyn jail, and God knows where else. There is a lot going on in this world today and enough crap to be angry over.

I know this may sound like a departure from my normal let's get drunk and fuck attitude some of you are used to. To those who have known me for a while this is pretty standard fare. I have been involved in a lot of protest in my day. Including the largest anti-war protest leading up to the Iraq War in New York. I saw a lot of people beaten by police for no reason, and nothing changing. When I moved to Atlanta there were barely fifty people coming out to the protest. Those that showed were met with taunts and insults from passerbys and a bunch of flag waving assholes driving by. Since September 11 th this country has been a washed in a sea of waving flags. So much so that we haven't been able to see our rights and freedoms being stripped from us. If Kent State happened today no one would even car. And if they did then Bill O'Reily would call them terrorist or traitors. When y'all are ready though I'll light the cocktails and we'll get this party started. There needs to be something done and the call to arms was seven years ago.

For tonight however there's three hours of wrestling on and I'm happy. I'm getting ready for a good night and I don't want to think about Paris or Scooter, or the space shuttle falling apart upon re-entry (which may happen). I just want to see a Monkey-Flip, and a Big Back Body Drop, and Ric Flair! So it's time to kick rocks-DEUCES!!!