~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RATE number EIGHT or be fish BAIT!
Harper
The wave loomed higher and higher and rushed forward at a terrifying speed toward the shore, toward its inevitably violent end. Soon, cerulean and foam filled Harper's vision, and the scents of salt and fish surrounded him, and he could well imagine Trance's expression at his state when he returned to the hotel. He wondered idly if she would wrinkle her nose and wave a hand in front of her face as Purple Trance had always done. For the tenth or thousandth time she her mysterious...departure, he wracked his brain for an answer as to the location of the violet incarnation of his alien friend.
According to Beka, she had definitely gone somewhere. Tesseracts, he began as he always did when he hopped aboard this particular train of thought. Also, as habitually occurred when he pondered the once-tailed girl's final destiny, he shivered as he remembered the bizarre sensation of walking the Andromeda with the tesseract generator-betweeen dimensions was how he thought of it. He hated to think of either Trance in that washed-out, eerie...
An almost imperceptible shift in the motion of the board under his feet and Harper was thrown into the fast-approaching speed at literally a breakneck velocity. Instinctively, he tucked his blond head hard against his bright Hawaiian shirt while relaxing the rest of him and twisting himself, rather like a cat, though far less gracefully. All this was meant to relieve his head of as much of the impact as possible. Any surfer worth the title and the salt he or she rode, Harper had learned before anything else, knew how to fall and ultimately land without breaking his or her skull.
Even with his years of experience and an adrenaline rush more effective that a case of Sparky, Harper was blinking and seeing stars for several minutes after his painful encounter with the by now shallow floor of the ocean.
A large number of beach-goers had gathered 'round to watch the mudfoot effortlessly skim and ride the tsunami-sized crests (Maybe, he reflected, not quite that size but pretty freakin close), and now, every single one cheered Harper as he pulled himself spluttering from the wet, hard swirls of sand and unsurely tottered away. Even as tight bands of fullerene tightened around his lungs each time he took a breath, the engineer managed a cocky grin and acknowledging waves and wheezing shouts of victory as the crowd parted to let him stagger past uninhibited.
"An' hey," he slurred an hour later, "if y'don' got a Common, Comwulf," he paused to finish yet another glass of his beloved Weissbrau and pound the bar to signal his desire for another, "preddy pink ship," hiccup, "mebday {medbay, if ya didn't catch that, readers!}, er, whatever, even if ya don' have one of 'em, y'can always beat th' pain th' ol'fashun way!" This he punctuated with a mind-numbing gulp of his beer, about a full half of his latest glass.
His new companions roared in approval, much in the same manner of the earlier bunch of admirers on the beach. "But tha's not th' bes' of it. You shou' see wha' I can do wi'this thing." He attempted to indicate his dataport with the bottle he'd just acquired from one of his new friends. His voice lowered almost to a normal conversational level as he pretended to confide in his listeners. "I bet I could get all yer tabs back t'nuthin', 'f I had enough time."
The responses to his declaration ranged from unmitigated delight to outright incredulity and blatant skepticism. Several shouted that the little man had hit his head too hard when he fell off that stick of his. Naturally, Harper felt morally obligated to defend both his surfboard and his mental state, the latter becoming more doubtful as he swayed uncertainly on his barstool.
"No, I'm seri...serru...I mean it! Jus' plug me in t'a comp, comt, counting thingy, an' I'll show you! Bartenner," he called, "where's your counting comp(hic)ter? I gotta check my, uh, my 'ccount." He winked hugely at his audience who laughed appreciatively at his deception and jostled those who didn't laugh quite enough. The woman tending bar eyed the short blond askance but shrugged and directed him to a terminal in the corner. She made a mental note to warn her employees about that one.
With his posse close on his heels, Harper unsteadily made his way in the indicated direction, managing to stand mostly with the support of the tables he passed. After several stabs in the general area between his head and shoulders, he found himself in the ethereal world of cyber reality. As was common when he was unusually tired, distracted, or drunk as the case may be, he flickered, parts of him disappearing or streaking {not like he's nekkid, sillies}. It all made for a queasy sight when he looked down at himself.
Nevertheless, as he had no real body swimming in alcohol to control, he focused on his goal with surprising ease and accuracy. First of all, the young, inebriated supergenius located the door controls and concentrated on telling the computer to open and close them in rapid succesion for several minutes. Briefly, he returned to his physical self and grinned lopsidedly at the impressed noises and accolades before leaving it again for the faintly glowing lines and precise, intricate matrices of the cyber world.
He set his mind on keeping his image steady, as his next task would be a sight more difficult than playing with doors. With a feather touch, he opened the financial files and simply studied them a moment. If there was too much action, especially in the bar computer's monetary sector, someone would notice and shut it down temporarily, or worse, try to purge it. If the purger knew what he or she was doing, Harper could be caught here until the computer system voluntarily let him go or someone forcibly removed the jack from his cerebral port. Seldom a pleasant experience either way.
Technically, Harper wasn't using his eyes at all, but he squinted anyway, a long-time habit borne of many drunken nights and hung-over mornings like the one he knew he'd have in a few hours. Obviously, the bar's owner had set a lock over the files, but it was a simple coded barrier, easily broken with a prod here and a careful spin there. Now he had to act quickly, before somebody official tried to open or check the account. Salaries, utilities and rent, supplies, and... Harper felt the alarm begin just before it actually did, leaped a foot in the... whatever and hastily accessed that system and performed the rough equivalent of silencing an alarm clock with a missile barrage, a bit unnecessarily forceful but perfectly capable of shutting down the alarm.
Before he returned to himself and after he'd opened the credit files and wiped them clean with a villainous cackle, Harper decided to investigate an odd flashing he'd noticed in a shadowy area near the financial records. It was hidden behind what felt like a glass barrier to Harper; he could see through the structure, but something was blocking his way any further.
After a few seconds of delicate poking at the transparent wall, he discovered a doorway of sorts that would lead to the bar owner's private files. She had a halfway decent firewall in place-it would take Harper at least half an hour to work through it, and the chance of setting another alarm off was great enough that he wouldn't attempt it unless he knew of something especially interesting back there. As he tapped the glass experimentally, he found he could make out a message behind the bright pulses that had first attracted him here. Secure, he saw. Keep secure...message...keep secure...search...keep secure...
Suddenly, he was snatched back to the real world with a jolt. Ooh, whiplash he moaned silently. He removed the jack as he opened his eyes to ask what the hell they were thinking; he wasn't some... and promptly tripped over his feet. Right, the Weissbrau. Damn the sweet, seductive liquor!
" 'f yer all done tossin' me 'round," he tried to whisper to the still congregated crowd, "y'might find a ple... pleasy... happy surprise when you go t'pay." Cries of joy erupted from the throats of many, and Harper fell over again just as he'd begun to rise, clutching his head. "Hey, a liddle consid...considra..consid'ration, here!" Shouts died to murmurs as a young woman, not much taller than Harper if that, made her very forceful way through the conglomeration. An iron grip seized the blond's ear and mercilessly pulled him up.
"Whaddya doin? If y'don' like..." A blue lock of chin-length hair swung as his tormenter tossed her head in exasperation. "Oh, Rommie, wha's goin' on? I jus' found the funniest thing over there-"
"Harper, what are you doing and what," her clipped voice rose, and the object of her interrogation winced, "is that smell??"
Flailing for a solid something to keep himself from sagging to the floor, Harper accidently brushed Rommie's frontside. Her eyes popped, and she immediately released her grasp. Harper banged his elbow on a nearby table and nearly fell bodily beneath it before sloppily righting himself. Sort of.
"It's a condimation of fish, salt, an' Weissbrau, nectar o'th'gods."
"Lovely." Abruptly, her voice sweetened to the tone one might use with a particularly recalcitrant (and more than a little slow) four-year old child. "Harper, why don't we go upstairs and get you all nice and tucked in, so you try to sleep off this oh-so-charming intoxication of yours?"
Even in his current state, Harper caught on to the sarcasm. "Yes, teacher. Can I have a cookie, too?" She reclaimed her hold on his auditory organ, and he yelped. "Ow, alright, no cookie!"
~~~~~~~~~~~
RATE number EIGHT or be fish BAIT!
Harper
The wave loomed higher and higher and rushed forward at a terrifying speed toward the shore, toward its inevitably violent end. Soon, cerulean and foam filled Harper's vision, and the scents of salt and fish surrounded him, and he could well imagine Trance's expression at his state when he returned to the hotel. He wondered idly if she would wrinkle her nose and wave a hand in front of her face as Purple Trance had always done. For the tenth or thousandth time she her mysterious...departure, he wracked his brain for an answer as to the location of the violet incarnation of his alien friend.
According to Beka, she had definitely gone somewhere. Tesseracts, he began as he always did when he hopped aboard this particular train of thought. Also, as habitually occurred when he pondered the once-tailed girl's final destiny, he shivered as he remembered the bizarre sensation of walking the Andromeda with the tesseract generator-betweeen dimensions was how he thought of it. He hated to think of either Trance in that washed-out, eerie...
An almost imperceptible shift in the motion of the board under his feet and Harper was thrown into the fast-approaching speed at literally a breakneck velocity. Instinctively, he tucked his blond head hard against his bright Hawaiian shirt while relaxing the rest of him and twisting himself, rather like a cat, though far less gracefully. All this was meant to relieve his head of as much of the impact as possible. Any surfer worth the title and the salt he or she rode, Harper had learned before anything else, knew how to fall and ultimately land without breaking his or her skull.
Even with his years of experience and an adrenaline rush more effective that a case of Sparky, Harper was blinking and seeing stars for several minutes after his painful encounter with the by now shallow floor of the ocean.
A large number of beach-goers had gathered 'round to watch the mudfoot effortlessly skim and ride the tsunami-sized crests (Maybe, he reflected, not quite that size but pretty freakin close), and now, every single one cheered Harper as he pulled himself spluttering from the wet, hard swirls of sand and unsurely tottered away. Even as tight bands of fullerene tightened around his lungs each time he took a breath, the engineer managed a cocky grin and acknowledging waves and wheezing shouts of victory as the crowd parted to let him stagger past uninhibited.
"An' hey," he slurred an hour later, "if y'don' got a Common, Comwulf," he paused to finish yet another glass of his beloved Weissbrau and pound the bar to signal his desire for another, "preddy pink ship," hiccup, "mebday {medbay, if ya didn't catch that, readers!}, er, whatever, even if ya don' have one of 'em, y'can always beat th' pain th' ol'fashun way!" This he punctuated with a mind-numbing gulp of his beer, about a full half of his latest glass.
His new companions roared in approval, much in the same manner of the earlier bunch of admirers on the beach. "But tha's not th' bes' of it. You shou' see wha' I can do wi'this thing." He attempted to indicate his dataport with the bottle he'd just acquired from one of his new friends. His voice lowered almost to a normal conversational level as he pretended to confide in his listeners. "I bet I could get all yer tabs back t'nuthin', 'f I had enough time."
The responses to his declaration ranged from unmitigated delight to outright incredulity and blatant skepticism. Several shouted that the little man had hit his head too hard when he fell off that stick of his. Naturally, Harper felt morally obligated to defend both his surfboard and his mental state, the latter becoming more doubtful as he swayed uncertainly on his barstool.
"No, I'm seri...serru...I mean it! Jus' plug me in t'a comp, comt, counting thingy, an' I'll show you! Bartenner," he called, "where's your counting comp(hic)ter? I gotta check my, uh, my 'ccount." He winked hugely at his audience who laughed appreciatively at his deception and jostled those who didn't laugh quite enough. The woman tending bar eyed the short blond askance but shrugged and directed him to a terminal in the corner. She made a mental note to warn her employees about that one.
With his posse close on his heels, Harper unsteadily made his way in the indicated direction, managing to stand mostly with the support of the tables he passed. After several stabs in the general area between his head and shoulders, he found himself in the ethereal world of cyber reality. As was common when he was unusually tired, distracted, or drunk as the case may be, he flickered, parts of him disappearing or streaking {not like he's nekkid, sillies}. It all made for a queasy sight when he looked down at himself.
Nevertheless, as he had no real body swimming in alcohol to control, he focused on his goal with surprising ease and accuracy. First of all, the young, inebriated supergenius located the door controls and concentrated on telling the computer to open and close them in rapid succesion for several minutes. Briefly, he returned to his physical self and grinned lopsidedly at the impressed noises and accolades before leaving it again for the faintly glowing lines and precise, intricate matrices of the cyber world.
He set his mind on keeping his image steady, as his next task would be a sight more difficult than playing with doors. With a feather touch, he opened the financial files and simply studied them a moment. If there was too much action, especially in the bar computer's monetary sector, someone would notice and shut it down temporarily, or worse, try to purge it. If the purger knew what he or she was doing, Harper could be caught here until the computer system voluntarily let him go or someone forcibly removed the jack from his cerebral port. Seldom a pleasant experience either way.
Technically, Harper wasn't using his eyes at all, but he squinted anyway, a long-time habit borne of many drunken nights and hung-over mornings like the one he knew he'd have in a few hours. Obviously, the bar's owner had set a lock over the files, but it was a simple coded barrier, easily broken with a prod here and a careful spin there. Now he had to act quickly, before somebody official tried to open or check the account. Salaries, utilities and rent, supplies, and... Harper felt the alarm begin just before it actually did, leaped a foot in the... whatever and hastily accessed that system and performed the rough equivalent of silencing an alarm clock with a missile barrage, a bit unnecessarily forceful but perfectly capable of shutting down the alarm.
Before he returned to himself and after he'd opened the credit files and wiped them clean with a villainous cackle, Harper decided to investigate an odd flashing he'd noticed in a shadowy area near the financial records. It was hidden behind what felt like a glass barrier to Harper; he could see through the structure, but something was blocking his way any further.
After a few seconds of delicate poking at the transparent wall, he discovered a doorway of sorts that would lead to the bar owner's private files. She had a halfway decent firewall in place-it would take Harper at least half an hour to work through it, and the chance of setting another alarm off was great enough that he wouldn't attempt it unless he knew of something especially interesting back there. As he tapped the glass experimentally, he found he could make out a message behind the bright pulses that had first attracted him here. Secure, he saw. Keep secure...message...keep secure...search...keep secure...
Suddenly, he was snatched back to the real world with a jolt. Ooh, whiplash he moaned silently. He removed the jack as he opened his eyes to ask what the hell they were thinking; he wasn't some... and promptly tripped over his feet. Right, the Weissbrau. Damn the sweet, seductive liquor!
" 'f yer all done tossin' me 'round," he tried to whisper to the still congregated crowd, "y'might find a ple... pleasy... happy surprise when you go t'pay." Cries of joy erupted from the throats of many, and Harper fell over again just as he'd begun to rise, clutching his head. "Hey, a liddle consid...considra..consid'ration, here!" Shouts died to murmurs as a young woman, not much taller than Harper if that, made her very forceful way through the conglomeration. An iron grip seized the blond's ear and mercilessly pulled him up.
"Whaddya doin? If y'don' like..." A blue lock of chin-length hair swung as his tormenter tossed her head in exasperation. "Oh, Rommie, wha's goin' on? I jus' found the funniest thing over there-"
"Harper, what are you doing and what," her clipped voice rose, and the object of her interrogation winced, "is that smell??"
Flailing for a solid something to keep himself from sagging to the floor, Harper accidently brushed Rommie's frontside. Her eyes popped, and she immediately released her grasp. Harper banged his elbow on a nearby table and nearly fell bodily beneath it before sloppily righting himself. Sort of.
"It's a condimation of fish, salt, an' Weissbrau, nectar o'th'gods."
"Lovely." Abruptly, her voice sweetened to the tone one might use with a particularly recalcitrant (and more than a little slow) four-year old child. "Harper, why don't we go upstairs and get you all nice and tucked in, so you try to sleep off this oh-so-charming intoxication of yours?"
Even in his current state, Harper caught on to the sarcasm. "Yes, teacher. Can I have a cookie, too?" She reclaimed her hold on his auditory organ, and he yelped. "Ow, alright, no cookie!"
~~~~~~~~~~~