The Alluvian Connection - Story Thread

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

15

Although you sleep heavily, you don't sleep all that well, waking periodically from dreams, or what feel like dreams, except that you continue "dreaming" after you wake up, even though you're quite sure you're awake, going to get a drink of water even to prove it to yourself. What you "dream" about is that you are reading news stories about the world fighting a new world war, with armies marching toward the City, and then that you are fighting in it, along side Kate, Leaf, Merc, and many others, some of whom you've never met yet feel you know well, in many parts of the world, in a hopeless war, against so many opponents - each of which is fighting hopelessly themselves. You all die, one by one, and the City, your City, more like the one you grew up in than the real one, is utterly destroyed.

It's after ten in the morning when you finally wake up for the final time, but you aren't awakened to a warm, calm day. Merc is carefully tracking Isaac, the Runner who took your bag from yesterday to a mall on the south side of the City, near the sea. From what you can tell, he's in trouble - the contact that Isaac went to has been attacked by unknown assailants. Merc thinks they're blues, but they're not using the blues' normal channels, and they're dressed in business suits, more like spooks or something than, well, police. You hear gunshots through the mike, and quickly reach for your own com link and your shoes when you then hear Isaac's frantic voice cry "They shot the Contact!"

"Get out of there," Merc tells him. "Damn, head to base, stay high." Merc then notices you getting ready to help out. "There's nothing you'll be able to do, Faith, stay here." Sighing, you sit back down. The gunshots are fading. Several minutes of tension pass as you hear Isaac's breathing, climbing around, jumping things, while Merc checks the security cams all over the city to check for pursuit. Some minutes after you hear the last of the gunshots fading, you hear Merc tell him "Head west - blues got a blockade over there, they're watching for anything and anyone." You watch as Isaac starts to head northwest, still getting perilously close to the blues. The chatter through the wires tells you and Merc that blues are now responding to the shooting in the mall and that a Runner was likely involved, but so far, nobody seems to have identified him. Suddenly, you are alerted to a City Eye bird heading his direction. Merc, alerted as well, changes the channel, and sure enough, they're looking for him as well. Now what? Merc puts both sound channels to the computer; blues are being redirected and advised to Isaac's location, but then you hear one of the blues mention meeting up with the agents who shot the contact... you hear that they are 'SS' operatives. You don't know if that stands for 'Secret Service', 'Silvine Security', both, or neither. But right now the blues are being instructed to track Isaac, not apprehend him, as if they want to follow him back to your base! "Wait, stop. They're tracking you. See if you can duck into the subway or something and evade them - I think they want to follow you back to base," Merc tells Isaac, indicating that he is thinking the same thing you are.

Minutes go by as nothing more interesting happens. Isaac manages to skirt around a building at a lower level and drop down into a sewer, a space that, in this city, is absurdly spacious, mainly as a defense against tsunamis, but it works for you and him. For now, you can't track him, with him being underground, but at least nobody else can track him very easily either. You let out a breath. "I could probably have saved the contact," you say, hanging your head. The police chatter does identify the client - and pronounces her dead at the scene.

Merc lets out a sigh. "You may be right, kiddo," he says. "But then, you might have just been killed yourself as well." You let out a pained breath. He's right. But then, that's true of every run you've ever taken, and every run you ever will.

Twenty minutes later, Isaac surfaces again, and heads back to base, arriving perhaps a half-hour later, with no more dodging of choppers, blues, or agents. Both you and Merc are happy to see him when he gets back in. Isaac describes the young woman who was the contact - a quite athletic young person, who seemed able to defend herself, actually, but got caught by one of the agents she and Isaac hadn't seen. The agents themselves had somewhat strange mannerisms, as if they were talking in code. After a half hour of discussion and Merc looking up things on the web, you still aren't entirely sure who they are, but you are able to tell from the context that they are working for the City government, but in some international capacity, rather than a local capacity. However, with the client dead, Merc decides to look into the bag. The three of you are shocked to learn what you find: specimens of some kind of pine-like tree preserved for DNA analysis, as well as other data cartridges and photographs. A handful of the labels on the photographs mention names that sound Chinese, which Merc is able to link to provinces in China, particularly Sichuan. Between knowing that your delivery target yesterday was somebody at the university, though, you also are able to identify the recipient: Sally Jones, a graduate student in biology at King Midas. "Does she have a professor?" you ask at last. It turns out she does: Elanor Normal, the professor whose office you were supposed to deliver to yesterday.

"Well, we're probably all dead now," you say at last, knowing that you've broken one of the Runner taboos. "But at least we know who we might be able to deliver to."

"Assuming, that is, that it's still valuable to anybody," Merc says. "Graduate students at universities have their own projects. With Jones dead, these may not be worth much to anybody now." Listening to the others talking, you find yourself thinking about the original mission. If these DNA samples are valuable, then you should get them to people who can use them, but for what? And why are they being pursued? You briefly consider whether to suggest delivering the samples to Elanor Normal, just in case.

---

If you insist that you will continue to deliver the samples to Dr. Normal, turn to page 30.
If you decide that this issue is over and there's nothing more you can do, turn to page 31.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

16

Speed, momentum, and reflexes are the life or death of a Runner, and while you can do stealth, you rely on your quick wits. You take the zipline.

The blues below you don't seem to notice you, or at least, you hear no shouts, as you zip above them, until, that is, you land on the patio, jumping onto a table where a middle-aged couple are enjoying lunch and using their table as a platform to reach the roof. By this time, you hear the police shouting from the street below you - they did see you, but were too sluggish to react. Not pausing, you sprint to the other side of the roof, drop onto another patio on the far side and leap across a gap to another low roof, this one of a laundromat. "Chatter's gone berserk. Keep going, Faith!" you hear Merc say, but you don't need to be told. You leap to the roof of a nearby shop and climb up onto a service tower with an antenna, with a cable you then zipline to a farther building to the south, one next to a taller low office building, but still nothing you can't get up with ordinary pipes. As you climb, you take a split second to glance behind you and see that the blues are chasing you on the ground, some of them SWAT officers, some regular blues. The diversity of insignias on their helmets tells you that you are being chased by several different agencies; you recognize the SSS logo, but some of the others you aren't too sure about.

"Halt! You have violated City law and are under arrest for carrying sensitive information! Halt or we will open fire!" you hear a loudspeaker behind you. Sensitive information? Do they know about the pamphlet you are carrying under your shirt? How did you get into this so suddenly? There is nothing but for it: you are exposed, and not able to move very quickly, so you have to do what you can. Noting the location of a horizontal bar like a flagpole not far from you, you take the leap and grab it, then swing to the top of an air vent that circles around the side of the building. Then, you duck around the corner, climb up a step in the ventilation duct, and then onto the roof. Surprisingly, you hear no gunshots; usually, they're not joking when they say they're going to fire. Nonetheless, you have to wonder what kind of sensitive information you are carrying. Ordinarily, they don't shoot at Runners without provocation, but obviously this pamphlet, what you delivered, or both, are important.

Once on the roof, you're out of sight, and can keep zip-lining, wall-running, and occasionally wall-jumping to the south, into the heart of the City. "Good going, Faith, you lost 'em!" Merc cheerfully tells you, signifying that the blues have given up the chase. Even when they do shoot at Runners, they rarely pursue you far. You like to think that just aren't worth their trouble, for the most part. "Really, good job. Very few Runners could have pulled that job off!" he compliments you again. This is true: you are not the most athletic of the Runners, although you are very good, and you aren't the best martial artist either, although you are very good there, too. If you are unique, then it's the combination of all your skills. You hear Merc saying something softly to somebody else for a second, and then he says "Faith, head for Leaf's north side hideaway. Leaf says you can stay there tonight. And take a look in that thing the man gave you, or whatever it is - it does sound like it's something they wanted you to see."

A few more minutes go by as you get deeper into the city, and start climbing up to find the best way from this side to Leaf's present hideaway. "I think I've found out who your pursuer is, by the way. If I'm right, he went by the name of Crag. His career as a street thief could have ended like yours did, except unlike you he didn't have any talent for running. So he went back to thieving, 'cause we didn't want him to get himself killed falling off of something," Merc says as he explains the story and you climb up a plumbing fixture.

"Well, whatever he's doing now, it isn't petty thievery," you say. "Someone had to tip him off that I was carrying something interesting," You then balance along a pipe that leads to an abandoned attic of a building. A faint flicker of light inside tells you that Leaf is home.

"I'm there," you say.

"Sure, just tell me what that prof gave you when you look at it, OK?" Merc says as you approach the entry. Movement stirs inside and you notice Leaf looking out at you.

"Sure thing," you say. "Be back tomorrow, then," you add, as you shut off the com link.

---

Turn to page 6

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

17

Taking the zipline is too obvious - you're sure they've got snipers covering it, or if they don't they'll be taking down anybody on it in a hail of bullets. Not wanting to be the victim of that, you look over the edge of one of the buildings and into the alleyway, drop to a windowsill, and then drop to the pavement and roll. The building is only three stories, and you land uninjured. Deciding that it is less likely a place for the blues to look, you try the truck first, but its door is locked shut and you're not about to spend time picking the lock to open it. You need to get out of sight!

Just in time, you manage to duck behind one of the dumpsters, just as you notice from the shadows that you're in a patrol of three blues move past the alley. Several heart-pounding minutes pass. The com link is silent. You begin to wonder if you made the right choice, or if you should now make a run for it. Suddenly, you hear Merc's voice. "They found your pursuer. Apparently he was supposed to be carrying something that he doesn't, so now they're looking for you." Your thoughts immediately go to the pamphlet you're carrying. "Damn, they're now covering the zipline, they've noticed it. You're going to have to get away on foot - don't know which direction is best, but you can't stay there. They will find you eventually."

You were afraid of this. Remembering from your previous sprints about where you are and where landmarks are, you try to think of the best route away that will draw the least attention - and the least fire - from the blues. Most worrisome of all, however, is that it's virtually certain that if spotted, you will be pursued, and you know you're going to be spotted. As you're thinking about it, you hear voices, and you take a glance around the side of the dumpster you're hiding behind to see where the voices are coming from. They're outside of the alley you're in between the two buildings, but gesturing toward it, from both sides. They may not know you're here, but you're about to be sniffed out even if they don't. You have to make a run for it!

"Merc, I'm heading east," you whisper, then bolt from your hiding place. Shouts of blues behind you alert you to the fact that you've been seen. There was no avoiding that at this point - you should have taken the zipline while you had the chance. Sprinting across the patio and between a pair of buildings, you hear gun shots, but there are no sounds of impacts, so you don't know how close they are to hitting you.

"They've got snipers covering the main exit that direction - get to a roof, Faith," Merc says as you make your way between the two university buildings. Pausing, you look up the walls for a quick way up, but there is no quick way where you won't be exposed.

"Here goes nothing," you say grimly, as you take a running start to give yourself as much momentum as you can that you can turn into traction as you try to climb the wall. You get just enough to be able to wall-climb up to a balcony on the second floor, but then have to glance around to see where you can get up to the next level the easiest.

"Don't say that, Faith," Merc says, knowing precisely what you are thinking. You're going to have to perch on the ledge where you are and try to maintain balance as you jump to grab the ledge above you. This is not going to be easy; a minute misjudgement and you'll fall flat on your back on the pavement, but you don't have time to find a safer way up: you can hear the footfalls of the blues as they near you. Taking a breath, you prepare to make the jump, and you make it - but just barely, by a scant three fingers on your right hand. Unable to support yourself on just three fingertips, you manage to swing your left hand up quickly enough just as your right hand looses grip. You spend a few precious seconds steadying your grip with your right again before pulling yourself up - just one more jump, and you can mantle the roof! "Move now, Faith - they're drawing beads on you!" Merc hisses. Glancing back, you see the blues that followed you down the alley aiming their pistols. With not enough space to get momentum to wallrun, you have to leap to the next windowsill as they open fire, bullets crashing through the window you were just perched in front of. Again, landing on a ledge no more than an inch wide, you spend a second just regaining your balance. Then, you make a break for it, again timing your jump just before you fall backwards, and grabbing the ledge on the roof. This time, though, either you aren't so lucky, or they anticipated your jump.

Lancing pain pierces through you as two rounds pierce through your back and into your lungs. You cry out in agony as your grip goes almost limp and you hang back down from the edge of the roof, the shock of the injury momentarily stunning you. "Faith!" Merc exclaims in alarm at your cry. They fire again, this time one hitting the small of your back and the other you don't know, but probably missing. You let out a fainter cry this time, even less able to resist the shock of the third hit, before you find yourself falling and hitting the cobblestone pavement, your legs bucking and landing you on your back. "Faith!" Merc exclaims again, this time a loud shout sending static into your comlink, but the buzzing in your ears seems distant as the shock and loss of blood overtakes you. With you lying on your back, your eyes meet the clear sky as the pastel blue fades to gray as you feel yourself fainting. You can't breathe, and you barely have the strength to twitch your hands. Before your peripheral vision fades to black, you see the two blues who brought you down approaching cautiously, their guns still drawn. "Faith…" you hear Merc say your name one last time, this time not loud or urgent, merely saddened. He knows what your silence means.

The End

[/center]

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

18

"Alluvia," Merc answers, musing. "That's not an easy answer."

"Well, you remember Libertas, so let's start there. Libertas was inspired by members of a movement called Vitalia in the United States, who came to the City. Abe, Pope and Reynolds drew took it up from them, and drew up a charter for a peaceful resistance movement to rally support for their political campaign to prevent the developing nanny-state from turning into the police state it's verging on now," Merc begins. "I don't know who your pa was inspired by to begin this, although it may have been Pope - I think he was a member of Vitalia.

"Vitalia was a bit broader in its scope than Libertas. They wanted to create a nature-loving free state, free country, maybe even free world, not merely prevent the government from peeping on everybody. They would have rebuilt the City just as surely as the new order did - it's just that the change would have put people more in touch with their natural selves. Vitalia was big on identifying with other life."

"The wave of change that rebuilt it would have been green, not white," you say, looking at the photograph. "So, what does this have to do with Alluvia? Where did that idea come from?"

"I was getting to that," Merc says. "The environmentalist undercurrent of Libertas that came out of Vitalia wanted to unify the area on the mainland that the City more-or-less controls anyway. They even had elections on the mainland for it and elected Libertas leaders - I don't know what happened to them, but I know they're not there anymore. This unified area would have been a country, which they called Alluvia, the land of rivers. Alluvia was to have been founded on principles of self-reliance, democracy, free thought, open communication, and acceptance and relish of the biological things that make us human. That was their spiel anyway. Last I heard about them was years and years ago - before you broke into my cooling tower," he answers.

"What about the exotic physics that this booklet mentions? And these reports? What does it mean that Alluvia exists in another part of the wave distribution?" You ask.

Merc chuckles. Then he outright laughs. "That," Merc answers, "is what I want to know!" he replies. "If Alluvia does exist in the world somewhere, somehow, or if there is some funky science-fiction explanation for how it exists, then they could well be what the City and PK and SSS and GS and all of the others were so ape shit about yesterday. A country that is that focused on both freedom and self-reliance and, I might add, the old world that existed before the shining facade of glass, steel, and concrete, would not be happy with the current state of the City, especially as this city would at least potentially be their City. This was to have been Alluvia's capital. And, again because they're self-reliant, they would invest in a military that could stand on par with just about anyone on Earth. They might try to take this City - by force!"

You laugh cynically, but then stifle it. "That's not very democratic, though, is it? To annex a city by conquest?"

Merc does laugh, somewhat cynically, and then grimly. "Except that it almost would be. Libertas was getting quite a bit of support, before the police cracked down on it and started killing people. They might have succeeded had that not happened. The Alluvians might seem themselves as liberators, and rightly so."

"Yeah, except that most people then cowered in the dark and let the City take over their lives," you say sadly.

Merc leans forward. "Yes, except for a very few, who use their natural athletic talent to do what they can to live free from the City's control, and who are unsympathetic to those whom they would describe as selling their freedom for security," he says as he looks at you intently. "You, Faith, are an Alluvian, in spirit if not in flesh. And don't lie to yourself - you wouldn't terribly mind if this City were forcibly demolished to make way for something more natural, right?" he says. You begin to open your mouth to object, but he stops you. "You would not, of course, simply kill the people who gave away their freedom, but you would be willing to risk their lives, just as you would and do risk your own, to change the City to what you see in the picture, though." You let out the breath you were going to use to object - Merc knew exactly what you were thinking.

Several seconds go by as you look back at the picture. "All right," you finally say, breathing in and out. "That answers the question about what Alluvia would have been, but not what it is. Who took this photograph? And how?"

Merc smiles ironically. You're back to square one.

---

If you now ask Merc about probability distributions and wave functions, turn to page 19.
If you ask him about Vitalia and the beginning of Libertas, turn to page 20.
If you ask him about entropy and biophysics, turn to page 21.
If you ask him what he knows about dawn redwood, turn to page 22.
If you try to look up what you can find about Elanor Normal, turn to page 23.
If you decide that you're upset enough to be done talking now and want to think it over, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

19

Merc chuckles as you ask. "That's not going to be an easy one, kiddo," he says. "I barely understand it myself."

"Use the computer?" you ask.

"We can, but here's the basics of what I know. You know what the structure of an atom is, right? With electrons orbiting a nucleus?" he asks.

"Yes," you say. "I also know that those electrons are layered in orbits, and those orbits have a certain number of slots, and if there are open slots in, say, a metal, then that means there is room for electrons to hop from slot to slot, which is how metals conduct electricity," you answer. "Drake taught me that. What does this have to do with wave functions?"

"I'm getting to that," Merc answers. "You see, an electron doesn't orbit an atom. Electrons when they accelerate radiate energy, and orbiting means acceleration." You know that, too, although you hadn't thought about it in terms of electron orbits. "The electron would radiate away all its energy and crash into the atom's nucleus in a tiny fraction of a second. What really happens is that the electron's position is not perfectly defined in space: it occupies a probability distribution, or wave, around the atom. Now, if you have, say, a hydrogen atom, so just one proton and one electron, in an otherwise empty universe, then the probability density of where the electron is at any given time is spherically distributed around the atom, but if there are other atoms to interact with, then the shape of that distribution gets skewed by whatever fields or charges there are for it to play with. Now, an electron in another atom does not see the one in our hydrogen atom as a point charge in space that is whizzing or teleporting or whatever around the nucleus of the hydrogen atom. It sees the charge of our electron smeared out in a probability distrubtion around our proton. The equation that describes the distribution of probability that it sees is what's called the wave function."

All right, one question answered. "How is this a probability distribution, then, and not just an electron having a volume?" you respond.

"Yes, so if something passes through our atom, then there is a probability that it will hit the electron. That probability is equal to the wave distribution of that charge. Thus, what is actually happening is that the electron in our atom has an infinite number of different states of reality, which average together create its charge distribution, but in any one of those states, the electron occupies a point in space. Interacting with the electron forces it to be at that point in space, thereby collapsing the wave-function, turning the many different probabilities into one. Of course, in interacting with the electron, you know where it is now, but in order to interact with it, you've either imparted energy on it or taken energy away, so you don't know where it's going, so it will quickly re-assume the wave function. This is called the Uncertainty Principle."

Despite your lack of formal education, you are smart enough to get the basic gist of that, although it's still a little hard to follow. "All right," you say, then look at the photograph. "OK, that's an electron. How does this apply to a city?"

Merc turns to look at the photograph and the supporting documents. "That's what I don't understand," he says. "The Uncertainty Principle puts a limit on how well something can have a specific location in space, and how well something can have a specific location in time, and there's a trade-off between the two. However, that trade-off is very small: you can know where an atom is in a microsecond with micrometer accuracy. Any kind of real object that we can think of is for all intents and purposes perfectly defined where it is in space and time, so I don't see how you could have two different cities in what amounts to alternate histories existing in the same place at the same time without being in different universes - but these docs say nothing about alternate universes." He pauses. "Maybe it has something to do with the thermodynamics they're talking about here - information creates probability distributions? Life destroys local entropy?"

---

If you ask Merc if he's ever heard of Alluvia before this, turn to page 18.
If you ask him about Vitalia and the beginning of Libertas, turn to page 20.
If you ask him about entropy and biophysics, turn to page 21.
If you ask him what he knows about dawn redwood, turn to page 22.
If you try to look up what you can find about Elanor Normal, turn to page 23.
If you've decided that you can't take any more physics, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

20

"Tell me about Vitalia," you say to Merc. "I was too young to know how Libertas started."

"Well," Merc answers, "That's a long story. You haven't heard it before?" he asks you.

"I probably have, but there may be missing parts that I'm not putting together," you reply. You do know roughly who and what Vitalia was, but something is not adding up and you want to hear it again - or, perhaps, it's adding up perfectly: you remember that Vitalia was an eco-political movement, but it was founded based on some scientific discovery of great import, and if you remember right, that discovery involved exotic physics. You're willing to bet even money that this discovery has something to do with this photograph.

"Well", Merc says again, "Years ago a woman started an eco-political movement in the United States. She and her followers thought that humans had forgotten not just their connection to nature but also that they were natural, and that natural people both used and appreciated their natural qualities as well as admired it elsewhere. These qualities had among them athleticism, self-reliance, and refusal to be taken over by the emerging new world order that dehumanizes and, in her words, de-naturalizes the Earth, people included."

You nod. That much you knew already: the seeds of Libertas, the self-reliance and refusal to bow down to the new City's government are already there, and for the athleticism, nothing more really needs to be said given who and what you are. Merc then goes into explaining how Vitalia's founder was assassinated, that she had some biological quality, a remembrance of what it meant for a human to be natural, that her movement relied on, and that without it, the movement lost purpose. "Some of its members, though," Merc continues, "clung to a hope that Vitalia had made some discoveries about nature and humanity, and the seeds of thought that they brought to the City inspired Pope and Reynolds - and, your pa - to start Libertas. Actually, I think Pope was in Vitalia before that, but I'm not sure. Libertas then went to have much the same fate here as Vitalia did in the U.S., though."

The United States of America - the bastion of freedom. You've heard those lies before, but imagining Vitalia now, you wonder if those 'lies' may not have been lies, once.

"What was the discovery that Vitalia made?" you ask. "What was the quality that its founder had? I sort of thought that it had to do with strange physics."

Merc exhales, pursing his lips to a thin line, nodding. "It was," he says. "It was." He then turns to the computer, and begins looking up the information he can on Vitalia and its discoveries. Merc has to get through the City's national website-block, but it doesn't take him long to hack through that - only to discover that the U.S. government has itself taken the server down that once had it. "Vitalia had another name," he says, typing into the search, but all of the mythological names from many mythologies, Greek, Russian, Persian, Japanese, Native American - they've all been shut down. Then, after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, you find a link - into the computers of the Russian Federation. You take over at the keyboard, putting the skills that Drake taught you to the test. After spending another ten minutes hunting up a blind alley, you find what you are looking for: a document describing Vitalia's discovery..., and its military applications. Trouble is, it's in Russian, and getting that translated without letting the City who is watching find out what is being translated is going to be impossible. You are fortunate that Merc's firewall and security-hiding gadgetry redirects his own internet use to random servers around the city, which is the only reason why the blues haven't found the hideout ago.

"Well, kiddo, you've got your answer, if only you could read it," Merc says.

"Yeah," you say. "Any of the runners can read Russian?"

"I'll ask around," Merc says. "Gotta be someone who knows. Russian isn't exactly a rare language in this City." It's not - you've seen graffiti in Russian here and there. Somebody ought to know, but then it occurs to you that this pamphlet that you've got will need to be run, soon, and it would be good to have all of the pieces together in one place. That leaves you with the worrisome choice: try to translate the doc into either English or Japanese, both of which you know, using the internet, and therefore possibly tip off the City's government that someone is looking into this, or risk the possibility of losing the pamphlet and anything important that's in it before you can learn about Vitalia's discovery. You're now virtually certain that the discovery did involve the very thing that these PK docs and the pamphlet are talking about, so knowing what that was should answer this mystery. But military applications? Merc and Leaf were right yesterday - you're onto something very big!

---

If you decide to translate the Russian document yourself with internet help, blues and their surveillance be damned, turn to page 33.
If you decide that's too risky, and that you would rather ask something else, turn to the bottom of page 10 and decide what to ask next.
If you figure you've learned all you can for now, and file the Russian document away to take it to another Runner later, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

21

Merc nods as you ask him about entropy. "I've been dreading you asking that," he answers. "Electrical engineering isn't chemistry, which is where entropy is really important."

"I know enough to know that it's related to energy, and that it can be made, but not destroyed," you say, recalling the conservation of energy, that says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. "But I thought entropy was just disorder?"

"Entropy is the lack of structure, I guess you could say," Merc answers. "And it's a statistical thing. So, suppose you've got a box, and you've got a divider in the middle of it, and all of the air molecules are on one side. The other side is empty space. What happens when you take out the divider?" he asks.

"There would be a shockwave as the air expands into the other side of the box," you answer.

"Right, now, if you then put the divider back in, would that force the air molecules back?" he asks.

You snort incredulously. "No, of course not! You would just have two halves of the box with equal amounts of air in each," you say.

"Exactly - by removing the divider and allowing the air to fill the vacuum on the other side of the box, you've created entropy," Merc answers. "You can't go back without doing work - and of course that takes calories, and you can't un-eat the food you're burning in order to do that work, so what you're really doing is just transferring the entropy to somewhere else. The energy is turned into heat."

"Yeah, but plants can take in the carbon dioxide I breathe out and make more food, can't they?" you ask.

"They can, but they're using sunlight, so they're moving the entropy to the sun, because the sun's supply of nuclear fuel is not infinite. It will take billions of years for it to run out, but it will eventually," he answers.

"But the sun would be shining anyway, even if there were no plants on Earth," you reply. "Doesn't that mean that they're destroying some of the sun's entropy?"

"They need to use the fact that the sun is at a higher temperature than they are," Merc answers. "They're using the sun's light, which is dependent on its temperature, to do work, just as a car engine uses the higher temperature of the engine to do work against the colder air. There is a chemical formula that makes reactions that lose entropy if the temperature is high enough. But I think you are basically right, and this is why life destroys entropy. Now, as life destroys entropy and reproduces, it also creates information, like the DNA in our bodies, which is a much lower entropy state. You know that the carbon dioxide and water gasses that you exhale have a lot less complexity and information than the food that went into you, let alone the cells of your body."

"All right, this stuff is easy! I feel like I knew it already!" you exclaim. You sort of did, intuitively - you have to use physics every day, after all, so the physics that make you work are something you have a natural grasp of. "All right, now, what does this have to do with probability? Those PK papers talk about information and entropy altering probability distributions."

"Well," Merc says, "that's the part that I don't understand." He pauses. "All right, so going back to our box with the air inside and the divider taken out, it is possible that the air molecules bouncing around inside it will all by chance find themselves on one side of the box, and if you happened to put the divider back in at that moment, then you would be back where you started. It's just vanishingly unlikely that this would ever happen, and you would have to measure the positions of each atom in the process, which would change them, so you would basically have to rely on luck. Very improbable luck."

"Except," he suddenly adds after a pause, "that the atoms themselves are small enough to have uncertain locations due to the wave-like properties in quantum mechanics. What it seems like they're saying here is that there's some physical quantity that is affected by the local creation of information, which means destruction of entropy, which in turn affects quantum probability distributions on a macroscopic scale."

You're not sure you followed that last bit. "What would that do?" you ask, now knowing.

"Well," Merc answers, "I don't know how, but I think the answer is right here in front of us. It does this!" he says, holding up the photograph. "It creates a probability distribution in which this is possible."

"Probability distribution?" you ask.

"Yes," Merc answers. "Want to go over quantum mechanics again?"

---

If you ask Merc if he's ever heard of Alluvia before this, turn to page 18.
If you now ask Merc about probability distributions and wave functions, turn to page 19.
If you ask him about Vitalia and the beginning of Libertas, turn to page 20.
If you ask him what he knows about dawn redwood, turn to page 22.
If you try to look up what you can find about Elanor Normal, turn to page 23.
If you decide that you're upset enough to be done talking now and want to think it over, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

22

"Merc, have you ever heard of something called dawn redwood?" you ask him. "I think it must be a kind of tree," you say. "That's what the professor yesterday said that the 'specimens' were."

Merc laughs. "You expect me to know something about gardening, Faith?" he says.

"Well, let's look it up - it's obviously important." It has to be - if you were pursued by someone for the contents of your bag, and the contents turn out to be specimens of leaves. Then the professor hands you that pamphlet. It's gotta factor into this somehow.

Merc turns toward the computer and does an internet search. Wikis of all places come up with large pages, but the City's surveillance and internet security blocks wikis, so you have to do some hacking to get through. Fortunately, Merc's computers are protected by an information re-directing firewall that prevents the City from listening in on what he looks up - if they weren't, then the blues would have found the hideout years ago. And, Drake taught you both well, hacking through the City's firewall into the outside is easy. In a few minutes, you are reading about the dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides.

Dawn redwood is a tree that lives today in western China, or lived there, until very recently - it's now thought to be extinct in the wild, except where it is planted in gardens as an ornamental. Until recently, this was all over the world as well, but increasingly as the wave of philosophical change that led the City's urban planners to replace the real plants with plastic mock-ups, other cities around the globe are doing the same, and it may be that the dawn redwood will not long be extinct there, too. The tree itself is a fast-growing and can reach about 130 feet in height. Unlike other needle-bearing trees, however, dawn redwood loses its leaves in the winter.

Why anyone would care about this tree enough to want to hunt down the Runner carrying specimens of it is not obvious at first, but reading further, you learn that the tree is more than just a rare, endangered plant growing in China. The tree is named because it was common during the final third of the age of dinosaurs, and was in fact discovered as a fossil, and in North America of all places, before anyone found it still living. Evidently, even China was a last hold-out of a once-great forest. It shared the world's forests with the now-extinct maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, making up a continuous forest from North America over the Bearing Straight and into Asia and Europe. You would be casually curious - you miss the tree in your family's yard, and you can see how a scientist would be fascinated with this thing. But that still doesn't answer your question from yesterday.

Wait, Ginkgo, ginkgo, you heard that name before, too. Looking it up, you learn that it was another tree, one with an even more ancient heritage, stretching back to the days before the first dinosaurs walked the Earth, which became extinct probably a few thousand years ago, in China. It had very peculiar-looking semi-circular, fan-shaped leaves. Strange, you think that one of your grade-school classmates, Shelley Rayland, had one of those in her yard, or something that looked a lot like it.

"I don't get this," Merc says. "Now we're studying botany. What's this got to do with quantum wave functions, the second law of thermo, or Alluvia?"

You're looking at the screen, reading this. At least you could try to track down Shelley - a year ago she was going by the name of Dusky, working for Hoagy's bar in Old Town, but you haven't been over there or heard from her since, and that section of Old Town is being forcibly remodeled by Callaghan's construction, so who knows if she's still there, now. That assumes of course that she remembers the tree; you're sure it's not still there. Her house was not too far from yours, so there's almost no way it couldn't have been demolished at the same time.

"Faith," Merc says suddenly, pointing at the photograph. You follow his finger. "See that tree, there, growing in-between the AC vents on that building?" he says.

"Yeah," you say. "It's a dawn redwood." You puzzle over it for several more seconds. "And the one next to it is a ginkgo."

"So, in other words," Merc muses, "what the good Doctors Normal are studying is the trees that didn't become extinct in whatever world this alternate City exists in."

"Yeah." That much is obvious, but that still doesn't answer the question of why. Being scientists, curiosity is the only reason they would need, even to go to the lengths of hiring a Runner to transport specimens for them. But curiosity alone is not enough to explain why said Runner would be pursued as intensely as you were.

"Well, what now?" Merc asks you. "This is as far as I can think of for chasing this particular lead."

---

If you tell Merc about Dusky and the tree in her yard and that you're going to pay her a visit, turn to page 34.
If you want to find out who the Normals are and why they're working on this in more detail, turn to page 23.
If you instead ask Merc about Alluvia, trying to see about why or how it would have extinct trees growing in its city, turn to page 18.
If you're done asking questions for now, and decide that you may want to look up some leads later, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

23

Breathing out, you finally announce "I think we should find out everything we can about the professor, this Elanor Normal, whose office that was." Merc nods grimly. Normally, this would be an intrusion of privacy - the very thing that the Runners exist to protect - but right now, your life is at stake, and, possibly, so is a great deal more than that. "We'll start with the stuff that's publicly available first."

It doesn't take you more than a couple minutes to find the web page of the biology department at King Midas University, and there, scrolling down the page, is a personal page for Dr. Elanor Normal, together with a link to her husband's page, that of Dr. Jay Normal in the geology department. There's even a link to the personalized website of Sally Jones, their graduate student whom you met in the office. Sally in particular seems to be an interesting person, an adventurer ecologist - you wonder if her last name owes to relation to a famous American adventurer archeologist of the middle Twentieth Century - it were nice if he were here, because he did bad things to totalitarian governments, too! This is easy, much easier than risking getting filled with hot lead by PK guards in some secret underground office!

Then comes the hard part, not the dangerous part, but the hard part, as you and Merc begin looking down the list of the Normals' publications, papers in scientific journals. Near the bottom, are the Normals' dissertation work when they were graduate students in the United States. Then Merc points out a few that are different from the others: they give the page numbers and everything of their citations, and the names of the journals, but not the titles of the articles. They're just labeled as "dissertation work"., and published in journals like Biophysics, Paleobiology, and PNAS, whatever PNAS stands for.

"PNAS?" Merc asks when he notices the quizzical look on your face. "That's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Very prestigeous journal."

"Of the U.S.A.?" you ask.

"Yep, U.S.A. That was back when the U.S.A. was actually a good place to live," Merc answers.

"Is there anywhere that's a good place to live now?" you ask grimly.

"That Sally Jones might have an answer for you," Merc says. "But right now, let's look at what we have here."

It takes you several minutes to hack into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' servers - you need every bit of the black market hardware and software that Merc has, as these servers are well-guarded. "Now, it used to be, that anyone could just buy a subscription to PNAS, but now it looks like you need a damn security clearance just to get into the journal!"

"How many people read it?" you ask curiously.

"It used to be that all scientists, graduate students, and more read it," Merc answers. "It was just part of what you did. Don't know how it can be that way anymore, though."

The title of the paper reads 'Cuvier was right: information-entropy disconnect in ancient evolutionary lineages leads to selection of multiple simultaneous paths of biological history that preserve such lineages'. That does sound promising, you and Merc agree. Annoyed at the constant security measures, you finally manage to break into the server and access the article. The top of the page consists of something that calls itself an abstract - Merc tells you that this is a summary of the paper, so you read that first. It's difficult going; the Normals, both of whom are coauthors on the paper, look like they were studying brachiopods, which seem to be some kind of shellfish, but you've never seen them before, except maybe in the glass display case inside of Note Hall. However, the gist that you can get is that brachiopods are almost extinct, except that the information created by their evolutionary inheritance, the DNA that has been living since before the first fish crawled up out of the ocean, was able to influence probability in such a way that a few species of brachiopods survived, and that this happened because of the non-existence of entropy created by the information of their history. Confusing, this is, but very promising.

Merc then reads the rest of the paper, or tries to - you can't make heads or tails of it. Merc really can't either, since it's almost all about biology, or maybe paleontology, not engineering, which is what his degree was in. You of course never graduated high school. In the discussion, near the end, you notice a reference to a strangely-familiar, Spanish-sounding name, in a sentence referring to partial states of existence created by the loss of entropy. Pointing this out to Merc, who agrees that it looks interesting, you scroll down to the bibliography, and look at the title. "That," says Merc suddenly, "is the founder of Vitalia!"

"So, in other words, jackpot!" you exclaim. "Any way we could get our hands on this book, or paper or whatever it is?" you ask.

"No," says Merc, pointing at the name 'Phoenix Series Memos'. "That's one of Vitalia's periodicals. You would have to break into SSS' vaults or the Shard or something like that to find those now, unless the Normals themselves have copies, which they might. Remember, those things got Vitalia's founders assassinated!"

"Who were Vitalia's founders?" you ask, wondering.

"Not somebody you would think you could assassinate," Merc answers. "Civilians, but unbelievably talented and skilled, and, until their assassinations, lucky. They dodged many attempts on their lives before they died."

You sit back and look at the paper again. "Wait, so let's think about this: brachiopods, or whatever they're called, managed not to get wiped out because they used the information in their DNA to destroy entropy, which let them... choose directions of history?"

"That's what the paper seems to say," Merc replies indecisively.

"So, creating and storing information allows you to choose paths of history, by destroying entropy?" you ask.

Merc blinks at you. "That sounds familiar, actually." Merc answers.

"Merc, I think we just answered what the entropy part of these PK documents are trying to say," you say decisively.

"We didn't, kiddo. You did! Come to think of it, I think that was Vitalia's discovery, that the information of evolutionary histories allows choice of alternate routes of the future," Merc tells you, smiling.

"Got it," you say, looking back at the PK documents. "And this City is an alternate history of our City, and these documents are talking about another path."

"As you said, jackpot," Merc says. "Now, here's the question: are these papers you lifted out of the PK office concerned that this almost happened, and that somebody might try something similar in the future to their detriment, or if they're worried about this taking over reality. It kinda seems like it's the latter, and it would make sense if it were partially real," Merc answers.

"Partially real?" you say incredulously.

"Yes," Merc says. "Schrödinger's Cat. The idea is that if you have a cat in a box that's got a vial of poison gas that will open up and kill the cat after a certain time, but you don't know what that time is, then there is a state of reality in which the cat's alive and another in which it's dead, and until you open the box and see, both are partially real, whichever one is more probable being more real."

"What?" you say, wrinkling your nose in a combination of disgust and disbelief.

"It sounds ridiculous, and that's the point, and no, nobody ever did this experiment. But what's not so rediculous is that electrons in atoms really do behave this way. That's quantum mechanics," Merc says snickering at your facial expression.

You sit there for a moment puzzling over how much, if any of this, makes sense.

---

If you ask Merc to please explain this quantum nonsense to you, turn to page 19.
If all of this makes sense and you want to look up why the Normals are now interested in dawn redwood, turn to page 21.
If you decide that now that you know what Vitalia discovered, you want to know more about them, turn to page 22.
If you decide that you've either answered all that you can, or that you're so glazed that you can't glean any more, turn to page 32.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

24

Taking a deep breath, you sprint east down the street, keeping as close to the north wall as possible, Leaf right behind you. The sounds of gunfire in the background become fainter and less frequent as you run as fast as you can maintain for the three blocks' distance. Thankfully, the snipers do not fire at you - that means you do indeed have cover. If you were the praying sort, you would be praying that they don't have the strength to match your speed with their rifles and armor and whatever else they may be carrying, but you've long become convinced that if there is a god, then he's pretty bad when it comes to returning his calls. You have no idea what Leaf is thinking right now, but somehow, you doubt she's counting on divine help either.

The gunshots behind you are fading, and you now have two blocks to go. The good news is that part of the reason is because they're becoming farther away, which means that you are gaining distance. The bad news is that they're also fading because there are fewer shots being fired, which probably means that the firefight between the soldiers and the Mafia is winding down, so the window of time you had for them being delayed is closing. Drawing on every reserve of strength you have, you try to run faster, as Leaf, several years older than you, struggles to keep pace. The final block is heart-pounding, both for your athletic exertion, but also because you know it's a race against time: if those soldiers get over the wall you and Leaf vaulted over, and know which way you took, then it will be easy for them to get to where they can just mow you down, and at three blocks, running in a straight line away, you'll be easy shots for soldiers with assault rifles.

After what seems like minutes but which you know is only a few seconds, you round the corner, your lungs burning for air and your muscles burning from lactic acid buildup, but alive. Leaf does the same a second later. Suddenly, Mercury cuts in. "I see 'em, Faith. They're Golden Shield's new mercs. You've got two blocks on them, coming from the northwest." That means they went right instead of left when they got over the fence in the mobsters' warehouse yard. Gasping for breath, you look to the lot just ahead of you, another large warehouse like the last, but this one is different, with boarded windows in what look like metal plates, almost like it's made to be fortified. Leaf taps you, too out of breath to say anything, but what she's saying is this is the place. It looks empty at first, but you have to trust that it's not. Sprinting, you run in, Leaf right behind you, not noticing the two men on either side of the gate to the lot until you are already inside.

Suddenly alarmed, you and leaf spin around to find yourself surrounded by more soldiers, at first with their weapons drawn and pointed at you, but then they raise their guns while a youngish man with a shaved head points at you and waves you to the side. Complying, you note that these soldiers are wearing different uniforms than the ones chasing you: dark red-browns the color of the rust and wood of the warehouses in this part of Old Town, not the asphalt gray that the men chasing you have. They do bear no distinguishing marks, though, just red-brown fatigues, and not even in a camo pattern. As you move to the side at the man's beckoning, the rest of the group, about six men and two women, begin retreating back into the warehouse behind you, the one you were headed for, but most of them keeping their aim on the gateway to the street. "Get in the warehouse! They're rounding the corner!" Merc says into your ear, unaware seemingly that you've made contact with another group, presumably (you hope!) your clients. Still cautious of the snipers, you and Leaf duck into the building quickly. You don't have much time to look around before, mere moments later, you hear gunfire in the warehouse yard outside, but it's from the group controlling the lot, not from the street.

"We'll have to abandon this base," the man who beckoned you in, apparently the man in charge says. "I'm Earlsberg. One of you 'Leaf'?" he asks, confirming your hopes. Leaf nods, and unslings her bag. A tough-looking woman looks at her and takes her bag. They glance at each-other for a second, as if some recognition between them, but you can't place it. Yourself unslinging your own bag, then another of the soldiers takes it, and hands it to their commander.

Earlsberg immediately flips open the pouch of your bag and pulls out an envelope, then opens it up to remove a photograph - you can tell Red's distinctive photographic style. It's a photograph of what looks like a military fighter jet, painted gray, surrounded by crates. You think you can read the word 'prototype' painted on the aircraft's fuselage, and crates in the foreground bear the all-too-familiar Silvine Security Systems logo, as well as another icon of a yellow (Golden?) shield. Although your attention is partially occupied with the picture, you do take a look at the surrounding building - the warehouse is filled with crates of various types, with several non-descript trucks in the back, and a small banner hanging from one of the rafters, colored white, with two green bars crossing it... in a pattern not unlike the pamphlet from yesterday, but without the river or the phoenix. Are they related?

"Command sure as Hell is going to want to know about this," Earlsberg mutters quietly, before putting the photo back into the envelope, pulling the rest of the envelopes out and handing them to one of his men, and then hands the bag back to you. The woman who took Leaf's back does the same with hers. "Give these ladies their pay, and double it. Then get them to safety. They risked their lives for us today," he says, nodding to you and Leaf. "The rest of you get ready to abandon base. No telling when GS will be back in force." So he knows that the soldiers pursuing you were Golden Shield...

"Yes, sir," the woman who held Leaf's back hands the photographs to Earlsberg. "Come with me," she says, unslinging her rifle from her shoulder as she leads you to a safe in one of the trucks where she hands you and Leaf your fees, a whopping ten-thousand currency, each. Where do these terrorists, or rebels, get this money? Are they funded by some overseas power? It's almost too good - or too terrible - to be true! You are then lead along with a pair of soldiers out the back and through a maze of streets to a small car, which you get in, wait a moment, and then drive about a half a mile to the north, then west. "Where do you want me to drop you off?" asks the driver, her rifle next to her hidden in a nondescript jacket.

After telling her the most convenient place, you wait as she drives you to your desired drop-off point near the edge of the Old Town district you are in - you'll have to scale to the roofs from here to avoid being seen. Thankfully, you're both rested to the point where you can continue, even sprinting, if you wish. After she drops you off, you and Leaf climb up a series of pipes and balconies to a roof-top about six stories up. Still feeling a little paranoid, the two of you hide out of sight behind an AC cooling vent and sit down. "I'm now even more convinced that the New City's government is planning on annexing our neighbors," she says. "If you can, I'd like to see if you or Merc or Drake could find out as much as you can about GS. I don't like being left in the dark, and while Earlsberg seems to value us, he does seem to give out info on a need-to-know basis."

"Yes, he does," you say. "Thank you, Leaf, for letting me help you. I also want to know what I can about GS. I'd go over there myself, but I need a rest. How urgent do you think this is?"

"Faith!" Leaf almost exclaims. "Thank you! You probably saved my life today!" she says. "Faith, go home, get some rest, talk to Merc and Drake. You're too reckless, Faith; don't get yourself killed." she says. "Besides, I don't think it's that urgent. I saw the word 'prototype' on the nose of that plane. If Red took it at all recently, then they're not ready to put it into action yet. And, frankly, the enemy they're going to be fielding it against won't be the mainlanders."

"Why not?" you ask.

"No point - that's a fighter jet," Leaf answers. "You use them to shoot down other airplanes. They want that for fighting a war against another country."

"Who?" you ask in disbelief. What could the New City planners want, you wonder. They could annex the mainland for much cheaper than having to build fighter jets!

---

If you talked to Leaf about Alluvia before, turn to page 35.
If you have not, turn to page 36.
If you still don't feel safe here and want to get home to Merc and talk to him, turn to page 37.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

25

Not wanting to risk sniper fire, you turn and run one more block to the south. It's a long block, but you don't want to run on a street remotely parallel to the line of sniper fire, because they will be able to pick you off. For about a minute, the two of you run as fast as you can sustain, listening to the echoing sounds of gunfire in the warehouse lot from which you just escaped. The sounds are fading, becoming less frequent, which is not a good thing, because it means that those soldiers are likely winning their skirmish with the Mafia. As you reach the end and turn, you take a glance behind you to see gray-fatigued figures climbing over the wall of the lot. You desperately hope that they can't run as fast as you no doubt carrying all of the weapons and armor they have!

You're sure Leaf saw them, too, because she seems to be running even more frantically than before. Martial artists you are, you are not going to be able to take on a squad of men with assault rifles and military training and who knows what other weapons they're carrying as well. You could grab an assault rifle in close-in combat, but you wouldn't want to do that with a combat knife. Presently, you have three blocks west to go, then one and a half north. Realistically, your chances are slim - but then, they've always been slim.

After two blocks of sprinting west, you hear gunfire, and then the whizzing of bullets past you. Taking a glance back, the soldiers have rounded the corner and come up maybe a quarter of a black, putting them at a block and a half behind you, which is probably why they missed with the first three-round-burst. That let them sight in on you; they won't miss again, unless you get some cover. Thinking even faster than you are, Leaf grabs you and pulls you around the corner to the street heading north. On either side of you are two more large warehouse yards, the one to the west, your left, looks like it holds cars, but the gate is shut. Not minding that, you sprint to the wall, jump, and mantle over, as you did the past two walls, with Leaf right behind you. Unfortunately, while you didn't give them time to draw a bead on you, the snipers back on the roof will have seen you do that, so if these soldiers are in radio communication, which they must be, then they will still know where you are.

Both you and Leaf are panting and out of breath. Leaf gestures to the warehouse doors, which are open, and the two of you run inside. Taking a glance around, you note that the windows on the back, the west side, are ajar, which means that you could crawl out and the snipers won't spot you doing that, so you head for them. Leaf is clearly thinking the same thing as you. In a minute, you're back outside the warehouse again, on the west side, with one wall, a street, and one more block to go before you reach your destination - assuming, that is, that they haven't cut you off.

Taking a few seconds to catch your breath that you hope you can spare, you and Leaf listen to the sounds of movement behind you, probably on the street. Then, the two of you mantle over the wall. Just after you land, you hear gunfire again, this time striking metal objects, probably the soldiers shooting off the lock on the gate. Whoever these men (and women?) are, they've no qualms about destroying civilian property. But with them heading into that warehouse and doubtless searching it, you and Leaf now have time, so you return south to the street you followed to avoid the snipers, and continue west. One more block west to go.

But this time, your luck has run out. You round the corner, and see three soldiers kneeling on the north end of the block where your destination warehouse was to be. They've been waiting for you. Two three-round bursts land one in your chest, to the right of your heart, through your lung. They don't hit Leaf with the first salvo, who manages to grab you and drag you out of the line of fire, you unable to do much of anything with the sudden shock and pain. Leaf exclaims your name. You hear Merc do the same. Did you cry out in pain? You could have, but you don't know.

Leaf sets you down on the sidewalk in a kneeling position - there's no way you can run, let alone sprint, with a bullet hole through your chest. Leaf grabs something out of your ear, probably your com-link. "Merc, Faith's hit! They've got us pinned! Anywhere we can hide?" There's no way you can hear Merc's with the com-link in Leaf's hand, and you cough up a mouthful of blood and spit it onto the pavement. You feel Leaf pick you up, and somehow you half-trot with her south across the street to one more wall, which she helps you over, taking too long doing it. Somehow, you are able to meet her part way, and climb across, as Leaf half-drops you to the other side.

Then, you hear again the wet splat of a bullet hitting flesh, but this time, it's Leaf's chest that explodes in a spray of blood where the bullet exits her body. Then there's the gunshot, and Leaf keels off of the wall and lands in a heap next to you, obviously already dead, or close enough to it that it doesn't matter. The snipers got her. That's another life you cared about lost, first your family and now her, although you aren't going to be bothered by that for much longer. Half-crawling over to Leaf's crumpled form, you pull the com-link out of her ear and cough up another mouthful of blood. You're dizzy - and you weren't dizzy when your arm got shot in SSS. You're probably bleeding to death.

"Merc," you cough.

"Faith!" Merc exclaims. "You gonna be all right? Where's Leaf?" he exclaims frantically.

Coughing up more blood, you manage to say "Leaf's dead, Merc. Sniper got her." An angry curse comes across the line that you don't quite catch as you cough up yet more blood. You notice that your vision is fading to gray.

"You're gonna be OK, Faith, you hear?" Merc says. You can tell he doesn't believe it any more than you do.

You don't answer. There's no need to. You're not sure you could if you tried, anyway. Gray is fading to black. It's all happening so fast. Flopping onto your side from where you were kneeling, the last thing you see is your hand limply holding the now-useless com-link.

The End

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

26

Dashing off of the patio and through the doors of the hotel's outdoor observation deck and into the fourth-floor lobby, you decide that your ticket to escape from the blues is elevation, not distance. They can follow you in police cars, but they can't follow you across rooftops. Inside there are people in the hallways and by the elevator, but none of them seemingly pay you any mind more than they pay anybody else in the lobby, despite that you're dressed, well, like a Runner. You duck into the elevator, and punch the button for the top floor, and relax for a moment as you ride up, taking a glance at the news bulletins as they scroll by. The United States is having economic issues, which affects many people in the City who still have investments there, because many of its citizens either came from America or whose parents were American, yourself among them for your father's part although you and Kate were born here. The article goes on to encourage citizens to invest in local businesses such as New Stream Energy or Callaghan Construction, since this is so forward looking a City and blah blah blah.

Then there is another article, breaking news, about City police forces pursuing an outlaw or more than on on King Minos University campus. Is this about you, or the person who was chasing you? The article doesn't say, only to report any suspicious-looking people to the proper authorities

The elevator bell chimes and you purposefully stride out of the nineth-floor elevator door and look around the hallway. Noting a door with a window, presumably a fire escape, you walk down the hall and test the handle. There's no warning of an alarm, which there should be if it were an alarmed fire escape - there's no reason to have a silent fire alarm. You push open the door, and stride out onto the stairwell, taking a view of where you are. You're facing south, which is ultimately the direction you want to go in, but the pipe from the roof that connects to the next building goes west. Glancing around and noticing that you seem to be alone on the balcony, you spot the pipe. You also hear police sirens and cars buzzing around, but no indication that they're focusing on this hotel yet, so you still have some time.

Closing the door, you begin looking for the easiest way up, and then find it by wall-climbing from the balcony up to a narrow ledge through which a pipe runs, and then shimmying to another drain pipe and up to the roof. Hopefully, nobody on the ground saw that maneuver, since there would be no mistaking anybody who could do that for anything other than a Runner.

Suddenly, Merc breaks in. "The blues still seem unsure just which building you're on. They're certainly not ready to come up after you yet. Are you going to use the pipe to the next roof, or is there a zip cable that would be quicker?"

"No, just the pipe," you answer. Trotting over to the edge of the hotel roof with the pipe extending from it, you look down to the street below. There are police cars down below, some driving around, some parked, but with no clear idea of where you are, exactly. Drawing a breath and steadying your balance, you begin walking the pipe. Twenty seconds later, you're on the next roof, and about to climb up a tower for another three stories before zip-lining on a cable.

"OK, they've figured out that you went into the hotel, and they know you're a Runner so they're going to try the roof. Make sure you're long gone by then," Merc informs you. Five rooftops later, you glance back to see the hotel roof-access door open and a squad of blues pour out onto the rooftop. They don't seem to see you yet, so you make sure your next few rooftop-to-rooftop jumps are behind some kind of cover. "They're giving up," Merc finally says. "Good job, Faith. You can take a breather for a minute." That's something you're happy to do after this chase, although you got something of a breath in the elevator as well.

You sit down in the shade of a solar panel on an eleven-story office block, not a skyscraper, but still a respectable highrise. "Did the blues give you any hint of why it was they wanted me?" you ask from the comfort of the shade and respite from the afternoon sun.

"They know you're carrying something interesting, but I don't know if it was those leaves or the thing the doc gave you. What is it?" Merc says.

"I don't know; it looks like a pamphlet," you say, pulling it out. The word 'Alluvia' is printed across the front, and then below it an emblem that looks like a nation's flag. Cracking it open, five-hundred in currency notes fall out, which you then put back into the pamphlet - that's probably the thing that was 'for you'.

"Pamphlet?" Merc asks. "You'll have to show it to me when you get back. Meanwhile, head for Leaf's north side hideout. She says you can stay there for the night."

---

Turn to page 6.

[Alex Slater (chlorophyll)]

27

Deciding to keep moving as quickly as you can to gain horizontal distance, you leap to the nearby balcony of another low-ish building and mantle up, the jump being a little too far for you to make ordinarily. It was the best you could do, and not many Runners could have done what you did anyway. Hopefully, the blues won't realize that you went this way. You keep running.

Several minutes pass as you make your way through the stretch of semi-urbanized semi-Old Town toward the center of the City. The sirens continue to blare after you like some demented choir. So far, they don't seem to have anticipated exactly which way you've gone, or exactly where you are. If everything goes the way you want it to, then by the time they figure out where you are now, you won't be here anymore.

Merc's voice in your com link tells you that everything isn't going the way you want them to. "Watch out, Faith - they're posting a guard on the roof you're headed to. Go west." Testily, you take a glance to your right - you had been heading south. You don't see the blues Merc is referring to, but that doesn't mean they're not lying in wait, so you take his advice and go west. The trouble is that there isn't an easy route to the west; perhaps the cops are zeroing in on just what feats of athletics you are capable of and what you aren't. That would be very bad if they could predict that accurately.

After a few seconds of indecision, you make the jump to a series of pipes hanging below a balcony, and leap. You just barely make the jump, and thank the training and a bit of luck that you made it at all. A fall at this height wouldn't kill you - probably - but it would mean that you would be in no condition to continue running, especially not with the fact that the blues would easily find and catch you.

Catching your breath, you continue to scurry up the pipe and the balcony, then grabbing onto a window air conditioner and pulling up to the roof. Now where? "Keep going west, Faith. Damn, they're persistent. You have any idea what you're carrying that's so important?" Merc says, as if knowing exactly what you're thinking.

"No idea, 'cept it's a pamphlet," you answer, trying to make it farther west. A few rooftops, cables, and solar panels later, and you're at a large avenue that you can't span without going north or south first, preferably south. Merc gives occasional mentions of how close the blues are to catching you. They seem to have set up a pretty good perimeter by now to the south. It's also getting tricky to stay on the same level, so you're thinking again that you need to go up.

As you consider your course of action, you notice a SWAT figure on a rooftop to the south of you setting up on top of an air vent cooling tower not unlike the one Merc is using for a hideaway. Knowing what this means, you duck behind a rooftop air conditioning block and ask Merc what to do, now that they're setting up a sniper. "Are they shooting yet?" he asks.

"Not yet, not at me in any case," you say. "But I don't exactly want to get shot," you add in a cynical understatement.

"I can understand you there," Merc says, as you look around and he checks the map. "All right, there are security guards in the building you're on, and they've just been told you're on their roof. Don't know if they'll be looking for you or not, but you can't stay there." As Merc says this, you admire a tower to the north of you, that your level of roof is connected to, rising to a higher level. You hope that will be a way up, if, that is, you have enough of a lead on the sniper not to get blasted.

"Where are they in the building?" you ask.

"Don't know," Merc answers. "They're not using radio com links." You grimace. That's both good and bad.

Steeling yourself, you make a break for the door, and force it open, only afterwards to realize your terrible mistake as heavy hands grab you and hurl you to the floor.

"Faith?!" Merc exclaims as he hears the surprised grunt of your voice. You're lying on your back with three stern-faced security guards standing over you. They move toward you and you scramble to get up, only to be discouraged from doing so by means of a swift kick in your stomach. The one who didn't kick you draw guns and hold them on you.

"It was a trap, Merc," you say, as you lie back down. You're not going to be able to take on both of them while lying down, however inept they look. They don't shoot, though, despite that both of them are aiming straight at your heart. You don't know if that's because they're trained and know where the heart is, or if they're just aiming for your center of your chest since it would be easy to hit.

Ten minutes later, you are in police custody - actual police, not just mall security guards. They tazer you into unconsciousness just to make sure you won't do anything until you are safely bound on your way to the police station. As you come back to your senses inside of the prison inside of a police station, you overhear some of the blues outside mention that a "she" - probably you - will soon be charged with treason. Treason? Is that what that pamphlet was about? You don't have much to answer: the pamphlet is gone, and of course so is your com link. It may be possible later to escape, but that will be a long shot, especially if the charge is something serious like treason. But why treason? Even this City has a constitution modeled after that of the United States, and treason is only defined in time of war. Is the City at war? With whom? Either way, it would probably be suicidal for you to stick around to find out, but your chances of escape are slim at best. They'll have their very best security on you.

The End