"Mega-Cleveland is about to *E*X*P*L*O*D*E*..."
                   N O   H E A D R O O M
                   A Collaborative Story

N/HELMSMAN: The sky was the color of a television tuned to PBS.

It was only two in the afternoon, but it was pitch black. The
torrents of acid rain were burning holes in my jacket. Lawless
crowds boiled through the mean streets of Mega-Cleveland -- rioting,
overturning hovercars, setting meter maids afire -- doing the wave --
the Indians had just won the Pennant.

But I had other things on my mind. The name's Helmsman, Peter Helmsman,
and I had warez to move, data to hustle, bad people to talk to. Illicit
data -- hot data -- is my stock in trade. The heads of celebrities,
world leaders, pop icons, digitally grafted onto photos of naked people
having sex with space aliens, diplomats addressing the United Nations,
dogs playing poker. It was stuff certain people didn't want anyone to see.

[A distant, roaring, rumbling noise. Peter takes cover in an alley
as a flying saucer rumbles overhead, smoke gouting out of its tailpipe.]

...Damn cheap-ass space aliens and their busted mufflers. But if they
caught up with me, my life wouldn't be worth the DNA it was encoded in.
VOICE: Not so fast.
N/HELMSMAN: The mollywire digging gently into my femur suggested it
was a good idea not to move. But I didn't need to turn around to
recognize the voice of the man I'd been diligently avoiding all day...

[We see only the shadow of a person.]

HELMSMAN: Lenny Moloch. How you been?

[Helmsman turns a bit, smiling ingratiatingly.]

HELMSMAN: You're looking well, Lenny. I mean it.

[We see Lenny, who does _not_ look well.]

LENNY: Shut up, Helmsman! This is all _your_ fault! You stiffed me on
that blackjack clip you sold me!
HELMSMAN: You wound me. That clip of the Pope playing poker with
Paraguayan chippet hounds was pure art. Buy a taste upgrade, Lenny.
LENNY: Yeah, it looked great. BUT IT WASN'T WHAT I ASKED YOU FOR. I needed
nude pictures of Boris Yeltsin, to trade to the Quebecois Brain Gangs for
fun and profit! I didn't discover what was _really_ on that chip 'til the
handover -- I barely escaped with my life! Now the Neo-Yakuza has a ten
million New Yen price on my head -- and one million on each foot -- for
a grand total of twelve million New Yen! I'm gonna take it out of _your_
hide, Helmsman! Whadda you say to that?
N/HELMSMAN: This was bad. On the one hand, Lenny had a good point. On the other
hand, he meant to drive it into the base of my skull. My careless accounting
procedures were going to be the death of me, unless I came up with -- [smiles] --
the perfect plan.
HELMSMAN: [amiably] So, ah, you don't like the Pope, huh?
LENNY: [narrowly] No. I don't.
HELMSMAN: DIE, INFIDEL!

[He shoves Lenny over the edge of a rusty bridge into the murky
river below.]

HELMSMAN: Humph. Nude pictures of Boris Yeltsin? Death's too good for him.

[He walks away, casting a brief glance back. A pillar of smoke rises from the
nasty river.]

HELMSMAN: (Wow, Lenny burns like a stack of tires...)
N/HELMSMAN: I needed to know what time it was, but I must have dropped my
watch during the struggle. Well, it wasn't worth diving into a river of
Manhattan chowder to retrieve a cheap Rolex knockoff. Not when I had my
latest delivery to make. A certain Mr. Sebastian was expecting this week's
installment of "Priss Descending a Staircase," and I had only...

[He checks his watch, which of course isn't there, and looks a bit foolish.]

HELMSMAN: ... ah... heh.
N/HELMSMAN: ...er, well, not long at all, to deliver the goods. Mr.
Sebastian _despised_ tardiness, and took his frustrations out on the
hapless couriers. Poor Decker, I remembered. What a way to go: battered
to death by a horde of sentient dolls and teddy bears. Ah, it's a damn
shame Decker bit it. The bastard owed me fifty bucks.

[Note that the interior of the apartment building is like the one in
Blade Runner.]

I arrived at the Howard Building, ran up the four flights, and got to
the door of Apartment 409 as the speaking clock in the hall chimed
three o'clock. Just in time.

[He rings the bell, and the door opens.]

VOICE: Come in.

[He enters the apartment... it's big, elegant, and quite dark.]

N/HELMSMAN: I couldn't see anything. I didn't like that.
HELMSMAN: I can't see anything. I don't like that.
VOICE: I don't see Priss on a staircase. I don't like that.
N/HELMSMAN: It was a warm, sultry, seductive voice -- the sort of voice that
just oozed into your ear, rolled around in your sinuses, found its way to
your frontal lobe, and just congealed there, and felt really, really nice.
HELMSMAN: Maybe if you turned on the lights. And where's Sebastian? You
don't sound like him.
N/HELMSMAN: (Sebastian had this grating, sadistic-sounding British accent.
And he was a guy.)
VOICE: He's been kidnapped by aliens.
HELMSMAN: And how do you know that?
VOICE: Because...

[The lights come on...]

ALIEN: I am one!!

[Helmsman assumes a stylish defensive stance. The alien looks kind of like
a Pierson's puppeteer, but pretty big, perhaps horse-sized.]

HELMSMAN: If you think Peter Helmsman is just going to surrender to
you, you'd better think a --

[The alien kicks him, hard. He goes flying into the opposite wall.]

HELMSMAN: ...guhhh.

[BOOM! The wall explodes inwards, throwing him to the center of the
room. He staggers to his feet and both he and the alien look in shock
at the new arrival. In Andrija's words: "A former wirehead now converted
into an 8-foot-tall Eucharist-powered Roman Catholic armed with the Pope's
deadly 20 megawatt Pole-Digger Hat projector."]

LENNY: Helmsman! FOOL! You DIE NOW!
N/HELMSMAN: Trapped! Trapped like a Babylon 5 fan at a Creation Con! ...
(Hmm, that was an odd simile.) Fortunately, my street-fighting skills took
over instantly and I leapt into action.

[Helmsman dives to his knees, in fact to the floor in supplication.]

HELMSMAN: PLEASE oh PLEASE don't kill m --

[-- as both his enemies fire simultaneously, over his head, and kill
each other. Helmsman takes only a moment to recover his composure and
quickly searches the bodies.]

N/HELMSMAN: Just like Christmas. I came up with $257.63 in cash and
change, seven major credit cards, the number of a massage parlor, three
video store membership cards, and a ribbed latex condom (the alien's).
It was time for a night on the town, and I knew just who I wanted to
spend it with.

[Helmsman walks towards an ordinary apartment building.]

N/HELMSMAN: I hadn't been there in ages, so I made a wrong turn or two.
And I was having a couple of second thoughts. How would Mona react when
she saw me? She'd thrown me out only a few weeks ago, on the ridiculous
grounds that I was amoral, low-life scum. But Mona... Mona was the one
lady who could make me turn over a new leaf, be a better man. I couldn't
just give up on her.

[Helmsman knocks on Mona's door.]

N/HELMSMAN: No, I knew she'd take me back. I have a way with women; I know
exactly what to say to them.

[The door opens.]

HELMSMAN: [casual] Hey, baby --

[Mona slaps him, hard.]

HELMSMAN: Ow!
MONA: You _bastard_! How could you?
HELMSMAN: Hey, it was self-defense, doll! I had no ch --
MONA: How could you have, have _sex_ with that _space creature_?!!
HELMSMAN: What??
MONA: Get out of my _life_!!

[She slams the door so hard, Helmsman flies out the opposite window in a
shower of broken glass.]

HELMSMAN: But Mona -- I genuinely didn't do that...!

[...he falls...]

HELMSMAN: Can I call you?

[...WHUNCH. Helmsman is lying face down on the sidewalk in the middle
of a him-sized crater. He doesn't move. An old man emerges from the
hazy acid rain.]

OLD MAN: Do yuh like my sidewalk, kid?

[Helmsman lifts his head, painfully.]

HELMSMAN: [disoriented] What?
OLD MAN: It's mine, ya know. All mine.
HELMSMAN: [getting up slowly, feeling around for his sunglasses] Don't
be ridiculous. You can't own a sidewalk.
OLD MAN: [producing the deed] Wanna bet?

[Helmsman squints at the deed.]

N/HELMSMAN: Notarized and everything. Apparently he _did_ own the sidewalk.
HELMSMAN: [putting on his shades] How the hell did you get a deed to a
sidewalk?
OLD MAN: Hah! You'd have to kill me before I told you!
N/HELMSMAN: So I did. Unfortunately, the old man was unable to answer
once dead.

[Helmsman stands sadly over the body... it starts to snow.]

N/HELMSMAN: Dammit. This poor, nameless old man... he never hurt anyone.
He didn't have to die. He was just another victim of the senseless, impersonal
violence that pervades this cyberpunk milieu. I gently closed his eyes
before reverently searching his pockets. On his wrist, I found a cheap steel
Rolex knock-off. Glancing at the familiar-looking instrument, I realized with
horror that without my own watch I had lost track of time, and forgotten to
feed the parking meter.

[He arrives at his parking space; the car's gone. The tracks of the tow
truck are visible in the newly fallen snow.]

HELMSMAN: Aw... nuts.

[Helmsman looks unhappy. After a moment he searches his pockets for a quarter
to call for a ride. A small packet falls out into the snow: the alien's
ribbed condom. Looking at it, Helmsman spots some text...

HEEL AND TOE REINFORCED. FITS SHOE SIZES 8-10.

Helmsman stares up into the falling snow.]

N/HELMSMAN: At that moment I realized I had a lot to explain to Mona.

-FIN-