So . . . here I am.

There is only one way into or out of this room. It's a door, one and a half meters thick and made from solid, alloyed titanium. There are people on the other side of this door, and they want me dead.

However, the door in question is made out of the strongest material known to man. It weighs at least thirty tons and is imbedded in hundreds of tons of inert hydraulics. These hydraulics add at least thirty more tons of pressure to the weight of the door, and the door itself can resist anything short of heat in the order of twenty-five thousand degrees Celsius, such as ground zero at a thermal nuclear detonation.

I estimate that will buy me three hours.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I sit before the mainframe of the most sophisticated electronic brain ever built. All that I can think to do is write. I enjoy writing. I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at it, but let's let posterity decide.

Here it goes. Once upon a time, (I've always wanted to start a story like that. I think that it's a strong opening and it bothers me that it's considered trite, but as this is my last few hours, I won't ever know what people will think of it. So, to those of you who liked it: thanks. To the rest of you: screw you.) Where was I . . . oh, yes. Once upon a time, (These parenthetical intrusions may become irritating. Ignore them if they distract you. I know that they distract me.)

Once upon a time, (time and time again) I was in Phoenix. Now Phoenix is one hell of a place, but it was summer, so it was hotter than that plasma torch that's making the titanium door drip away like the seconds of my life. (All right, maybe that was pretty bad, what are you going to do about it, huh?) I was in a bar. (I don't drink, but you can find good work in bars. Not to mention entertainment. You know, the hot, sweaty, I-Promise-I'll-Respect-You-In-The-Morning type of entertainment that I'll stop describing. Children will read this. Hell, everyone will read this.) A man approached me with a proposition. (The type that's illegal, not immoral. It wasn't that kind of a bar.) He said that society is sick. Well, I'm not sure about that, but I could see his point. I mean, society is more than a little queasy, and it could use a good physician, but Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. has been dead damn near a century, and modern doctors drug your problems away. Society seems to be doing a pretty good job of that on its own. (I don't touch artificial substances. As mercenary, I could always take down some bozo riding a sub easier than one not. Even those combat jobs.)

So . . . he's got this plan to destroy society. `What about afterwards,' I ask. `Anything would be better!' he says. Well, I didn't know about that, but I ask him what he intends to do, `I mean, society is a pretty big critter. Are you gonna kill it outright, or just hamstring it?' Well, after I explained my colloquialisms, (That's a word he understood, `Book learned!' my great grand-daddy would've said) he tells me what he wants me to do. I laughed at him. Then he quoted my pay.

I stopped laughing.

Now, until that moment, I hadn't taken the anarchist seriously. But, if he was fluid enough to offer me that much, then he had enough to float his plan, even if he was giving me a full fourth of his resources. Now, I'm not sure if this job was as much of a noble deed as he thought, but that was a lot of gold. I mean a lot of gold. I think it weighed more than my flat. I know it weighed more than my car.

So I said yes.

He gave me a full tenth in advance. I outfitted myself through my supplier, then considered a trip to Acapulco. Hell, I could buy Acapulco. At least, when I get the rest. All right, I may be exaggerating, but hell, it's my story and it was an awful lot of gold.

I went pretty mainstream (albeit state of the art) when it came to weapons. Two .8mm, fully automatic, Beretta Flechette Launchers, one for each hand. This was the Gauss model and electro-magnetic propulsion has a tremendously fast firing rate, so I also bought sixteen hundred each, of standard, poison, knockout, armor piercing, and explosive flechettes. I decided against an assault rifle. I mean, the Beretta .8mm have comparable stopping power and I couldn't carry any more ammo anyway. I had the pistols altered to fit my cybernetic idiosyncrasies.

Then I decided to have a little fun. Now, Ex-Corp recently came out with a new suit of combat armor. It's a light, flexible, crystal-polymer matrix, nearly indestructible, with a sensory network that you can jack straight in or wire through your cybernetics. The suit itself was less encumbering than kevlar and could withstand hundreds of thousands of foot-pounds before tearing. The helmet was an andonized polymer that could resist impacts that would probably rip your head off with the inertia anyway, and it conveyed three hundred and sixty degree vision (Something that you have to experience to believe). It had normal, infra-red, low-lite, and telescopic capabilities, and to top it all off, I had a H.U.D. to play with. (H.U.D. is an antiquitated acronym standing for Heads Up Display. I used to fly antique jets. Really the helmet just plugged into the neuro-jacks in the back of my cranium. I may not be fully organic, but I like to look like a virgin.)

To round out my arsenal, I bought ten canisters of neuro-toxin. As an afterthought I bought a load of High Explosive Armor Piercing grenades. I had to go to Miami, and I felt I had better prepare for traffic.

I thought about buying a backpack tactical nuke. I mean, I could afford it, but fissionable materials are heavy and I value mobility. Besides, with my suit's environmental I could survive nearly anything, including temperature extremes. I really didn't want to take in something that could kill me when they probably couldn't. Now I wish I had. (Deterrence my ass, I'm just a poor loser.)

I had to pick up an envelope. I climbed into my Ferrari/McDonnell Douglas Testerossa VT. (Yes, I own a Testerossa. I'm damn proud of it. It was a fringe benefit of an old job and it cost me a bundle in forgeries to get it in my name. You know, I hear that Ferrari has nearly been given license to build vector thrust vehicles in the U.S. without the aid of McDonnell Douglas. Too bad they won't get a chance. Anyway, the old McDonnell Douglas engines are good ones. They did, after all, help pioneer vector-thrust with the harrier.) I engaged the turbines and took off. At five thousand feet I leveled off and opened her up. I was above low-level traffic but below commercial air traffic. It's an experience, you know. Jacked into the autopilot, I became the car. It's incredible, the closest thing there is to true freedom. There isn't a lot of that these days. We're a technocracy. We've begun to rely on machines so heavily that they have become a stronger part of us than our arms. But, then again, my arms are machines. I wonder if that's symbolic.

But I wax poetic.

Whatever the fuck that means.

I landed in Miami two hours later. My next leg would take me to Nevada, and I would arrive there almost four hours after I had left Phoenix. I climbed back into my sports car and flew the rest of the trip.

I ditched my beautiful machine in the desert and hoofed it. It was a good five klicks and the walk helped me work the knots out of my back and legs. It wasn't an easy place to find, but the envelope came complete with maps. I heard once that only a handful of people know the facility's actual location. I hoped that would cut down my opposition. (I'm just glad the damned place wasn't in Geneva, like I'd heard.)

The perimeter fence was a dark zapper (you know, the kind that really screw up the neurons. Some kind of headache, huh, boss?), so I had to wire a brown loop. (I'm very good at that sort of thing. This is what I do.) As the brown loop faded the field, I stepped through confidently. (Actually I almost shit my pants I was so scared.) I switched to infrared and stepped through the network of detection beams. About halfway across the yard I picked up a guard on the opposite building, a virgin by the signature. I clicked to low-lite and locked a targeter through my H.U.D. I shifted to standard flechettes and squeezed off one hundred and thirty-six rounds in a short burst. His head toppled cleanly off his shoulders. (I love this suit. It was worth the five million six that I paid for it.)

Electro-magnetic propulsion is quiet, so I went unnoticed.

I estimated that I had five minutes.

I was wrong . . . I had seven.

The front door was harder to bypass, but after two minutes, I was in. (I'd like to tell you exactly how I do this, but I don't think that it would do you much good at this point.) Once inside, I shut the door and bypassed the recognition circuits, locking it until fixed. I doubt it will be fixed anytime soon. (You see I placed a piece of cellophane tape between two leads. That's a nearly invisible, not to mention sadistic, way to screw up electronics.)

The main hall had its security, and I really didn't see anyway to bypass it, so I just walked straight in. My H.U.D. read six minutes. Sloppy, I should have been in there in four, but obviously they hadn't found the body yet, and didn't realize they were under attack until the hall security picked me up. At least I wasn't the only one that was sloppy.

I believe my H.U.D. read seven minutes and six seconds when I met the first wave of resistance. I came around the corner, and they were farther down the hall, about twenty meters ahead of me. I didn't roll or anything. That was my first mistake, relying too heavily on my toys. I had cut the first two in half, mortally wounded the third, and was royally messing up the vitals on the fourth when the fifth opened up. I didn't think that he could respond that fast. He was probably riding a sub, most likely a combat job.

Now this armor is good. I could feel his body heat through the sensory net. I could read his vital signs through a translator circuit in my infrared. I could register the temperature of his muzzle flashes. I could estimate the velocity and force of the bullets as they impacted with my armor. However, as the matrix absorbed the inertia of the fifty caliber rounds, spreading bruises and cracking ribs, I couldn't keep my feet.

To top it all off, I landed wrong. My spine absorbed the full shock, and my breath was whooshed out of my lungs, adding insult to my injuries. I started thrashing about and watched my vitals go way out of control.

I was like that when he killed me.

Just kidding! Actually I raised my Beretta, clicked in an explosive flechette, and squeezed it off into his mouth, hitting him in the soft pallet and turning his head into a fine red mist with pink-grey chunks that reminded me absurdly of tofu. Funny thing, that.

I arched my back, releasing the pressure on my diaphragm and allowing air to fill my lungs. This isn't as easy as it sounds, especially with broken ribs. I became dizzy, and must have blacked out, but when I came to, less than a minute had passed. The pain editor in my suit's bio-chip was at work, and already the edge was coming off the pain. In moments I was back on my feet.

(Perhaps I should explain something about my cybernetics. You may be wondering how I performed that ammo change. Two years ago I had both my arms ripped off by a jealous girlfriend. Luckily, my credit chip was fluid from a recent job. I received medical care and they even brought me around long enough to customize my cyberware. I couldn't afford any decent weapons, but there's still plenty of cyber in this punk. My arms are capable of storing up to five different types of ammunition, and still be selective about feed. Let me give you an example. My flechettes, packed, are less than one millimeter thick. In one arm I can pack five lines of eight hundred rounds each. They're fed through my palm directly into each gun. This is the only reason I could use these Berettas. In a clip, you couldn't contain enough ammunition to sustain five seconds of fire. It's a handy thing to have as a merc.)

Okay. Now, maybe I shouldn't have pumped that explosive flechette into him. I mean, the standard rounds only generate a high frequency buzz, but they had to know I was here by then: Besides, he pissed me off.

Anyway . . . it was here that they tried to gas me. Ten tons of metal crashed down on either side of me and the corridor filled with gas, probably contact, almost definitely fatal. Of course, my armor protected me. I pulled out my portable tool kit, cut through the panel, and ran a bypass.

I was on my way again.

I had been on my assault twenty minutes when I hit wave three of the defense. They had the corridor barricaded and were laying a suppressing fire of the hall. I threw a nerve gas canister and stepped over their twitching bodies, being careful not to slip in the blood that was squirting from their pores.

At the next barricade they wore gas masks. My neuro-toxin requires only exposed skin. This time I slipped.

Moments later, I picked up the slight vibration of footsteps. Someone was stalking me. I continued until I was standing in the middle of a long, deserted hall. Then I waited.

He came around the corner and stood to face me. He was wearing body armor similar to my own, and that made me nervous. I clicked to armor piercing flechettes and hit him with a sustained burst. It forced him back several steps. His burst almost set me on my ass and ground the ends of my ribs together. Luckily my suit's bio-chip compensated by blocking my pain centers. I hate relying on that, but sometimes its necessary.

We both knew the score. Our armor was impenetrable but completely flexible. A bullet couldn't penetrate it, and the kinetic energy of even the most powerful of handguns is less than that of a punch to the nose. A bullet's power is in how concentrated its energy is applied, which makes it easy to drill through flesh. Take that energy and fire it into a substance that it can't penetrate, and the force is distributed by that substance. The bottom line is that a good swift kick would do more damage, because this armor was nothing more than a really tough suit of clothes.

I dropped my guns and approached him. He had a rank and insignia on his armor. He was probably in charge of security. Or maybe he was their hired ringer. I don't know, but I doubt that they had many of these suits.

I started with a punch. You know, to kind of test the waters. He blocked easily and returned with a kick. I blocked it but didn't try anything fancy.

Then it started. He hit me with a flurry of attacks, beating down my guard and forcing me back. I had a difficult time returning the assault as he pressed down on me.

He was good.

I slipped through his guard, hitting him hard in the helmet, jerking his head back, but not enough to break his neck . . . unfortunately. He stumbled back a step. I stomped my foot, pulling his attention down, then punched for his face plate again, kicking him in the nuts as he blocked.

It didn't phase him. That's when I realized that he was riding a substance. A combat job. A good one.

He was all over me. I was on the defensive again. It was bad, and I was breathing real heavy-like. I wasn't sure that I would survive.

I did, of course.

I spun, putting all the power I had behind a cybernetic backhand. It caught him across the face, knocking him sideways a step. Now, I know, you're probably wondering why I was doing this. You might think that it was having no effect. Well, you're wrong. Every time I hit him in the face, it was pissing him off. Normally there wouldn't be much benefit in that. The man was a pro. However, he was riding a sub, and I could tell he was on the edge. So I forced myself through his guard again, jabbing him in the face.

He snapped.

As he came at me I stepped aside, kicking him full in the gut, splintering his ribs like brittle twigs and sending the shards through his lungs. As he doubled over, coughing, I knew I had only a second.

I kicked him full in the head, picking up his body and flipping it over on his back. He was killed instantly, his neck snapped.

So . . . I was on my way again.

Forty minutes into my assault found me running a bypass on that very door that protects me now.

The vibration was picked up by my sensory net, even with all the abuse that it was taking, long before my ears heard the noise. (I bought a microwave from Ex-Corp once. I've had it five years and it has never needed a repair. That alone is enough to earn my loyalty.) The door was in the blind wall of a T-intersection and there were troops sneaking down all three halls. (Remember my helmet?) I spun and started mowing down the first wave with my Berettas, killing them pretty easily. Both guns clicked dry and I had to shift to knock-out darts.

I could feel the vibration without aid now.

But these troops were pretty persistent critters. They had to have been on combat subs. By that time I had worked completely through poison ammo and clicked to armor piercing.

It was then I saw the tank.

It was five seconds later that I saw the cyborg.

I didn't know which was worse. With my left hand I started pumping A.P. darts through the tank, while my right hand riddled the cyborg. There wasn't much effect, and I think the only human thing that the cyborg had was a brain. If you could call it human.

I raised my Beretta for a head shot.

At that moment the tank fired as it swerved into the wall, its crew dead. The round hit me full in the head, distracting me as the cyborg grabbed me under the arms, crushing my rib cage.

I probably would have been dead then, but the tank crew had underestimated a normal tank round's ability to kill me. I don't care if my armor would have withstood it, but if I had been hit by the force of a standard depleted uranium tank shell, you would have been hard pressed to find two bones in me more than a half an inch long.

As it was, they had fired one of those robot, gyro-rounds. You know, the kind that drill through armor. I could see the round drilling towards my right eye and blanked out a moment as the cyborg splintered what was left of my rib-cage. My arms thrashed about as my pain editor tried to compensate, twitching as my Berettas dumped their rounds into the walls.

Two more ribs cracked, (and I thought they had all broken. What a pleasant surprise!) causing me to spit blood across my visor, tinting my vision red. I watched the dust from the gyro-round sift down next to my right eye. My guns were firing explosive rounds now, riddling the wall with little zit holes and making a sound like a high-speed drum roll.

I threw down my pistols and reached up, ripping my helmet off, destroying the seals and breaking my nose in the process. I barely had enough presence of mind to point the bottom of the helmet at the head of the cyborg. The round drilled through and crashed into the other side of the helmet, detonating.

The force of the explosion ripped the helmet from my grasp and hit the cyber-thing full in the face, caving in its skull and squirting its brain out of its audio receptors. I fell to the ground, trying to grasp, trying to breath. The pain was beyond my bio-chip's ability to compensate. I felt my suit pumping endorphins into my system. That's all I needed. I don't like using them, (they screw up your reflexes) but they killed the pain and I was in danger of passing out. Other chemicals are holding off the effects of shock. That's keeping me going, but the pain is still there, still overwhelming, and even the breath it takes to dictate this story is a constant reminder.

It was over.

Almost.

I finished my bypass and picked up my helmet. It would protect my head, and I still could see out of it normally, but otherwise it was a total write off. I pulled the disk they had given me in the envelope out of the storage panel in my helmet. It appeared undamaged. I slid it into the mainframe and accessed it. I checked my time. I had left Phoenix six hours and fifty eight minutes before.

Now, they say that, including his rest, God created the Earth in seven days. I had just destroyed it in under seven hours.

And I wonder why I did it. The gold will still be there, and it will probably become the new monetary system, but I'll never see it. My car will still be there, and it won't be affected, but I'll never drive it. I don't even know who the anarchist was, and I never will.

I can't help but get religious, I was raised a Lutheran. They say that God created the world in six days, then rested. They say the solar system is over six billion years old. They say that God's days are a billion years long.

When God wakes up, he's going to be pissed.

I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Now that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Anyway, there's probably an army on the other side of that door. They're within minutes of cutting through. My helmet's fucked, cooked, and air conditioned, but it will still protect my head. I have eight canisters of neuro-toxin left, but I can't use them without killing myself now that I've lost environmental integrity. I have twenty grenades, but that won't be enough. I have one hundred and thirty-eight explosive flechettes left. I fired the rest into the walls.

I don't stand a chance in hell.

That's what it's all about, though, isn't it? Some people fear hell. Some people love hell. Some people raise hell. Some people go to hell. Some people are mad as hell. What the hell does it all mean?

Somebody, when talking about America, once told us to beware, for there is no afterlife for a place that began as heaven.

You know, it just occurred to me that some of you may not have figured it out yet.

It's all about communication. That's the backbone of society. You can't have civilization without it. Nowadays civilization has brought communication to the level of an art form. Everything connects with everything else, even the electronic door latches. Nothing is isolated, and it's all routed through one system. Now, this system is backed up better than any network ever. Any segment of this net can take over at any given time. Nobody can destroy this system.

But this system can destroy society.

There is an old type of computer program called `virus.' All computers are protected against it, but the disk that I just accessed three hours ago has the most sophisticated virus ever created. It could only work here, at the active mainframe, but now the most powerful electronic brain ever created will use every resource available to keep you out of the system. You'll never crack it.

So . . . every time you try to use the phone, every time you try to use your computers, every time you try to program your food dispensers, every time you try to start your cars, every time you try to open your doors . . .

All you will get is this story.

They're about to break through the door now. The hole they're cutting is nearly complete.

Good bye.

Good luck.