Orgonomicon by Boris D. Schleinkofer Page B

her support
network and severed ties. She had been amazingly thorough and
efficient at it, as if she'd been coached. He couldn't wiffle out
of this one. He would sink, or he would swim.
    He'd immediately begun to sink. The drugs,
sleeping until noon, the giving up on himself—he'd thrown himself
headlong down the well of despair and would have happily died
there, if not for the boy. The boy was his only hope to pull
himself back together, a motivator outside himself wouldn't fade in
the light of day or seem less important when he was high. It
sucked, made him feel weak, that he couldn't screw up the
inspiration all by himself to save his own ass; but 'doing it for
the boy' had worked. He got off the drugs.
    And it still had been for nothing. She'd let
him come back, but she still hated him, and would forever. It had
been for nothing. He just wanted to give up.
    Give up.
    He pushed away from his laptop, disgusted,
his feet leading him out the door on a mission he hadn't yet
acknowledged.
     
    Agent BUZ4937 was getting impatient with him.
"That's how you run one through a fuckin' simulation. Hurry the
fuck up and get your job done. I want to get out of this shithole
town already."
    Seal adjusted the controls of his machine—a
mental interface with the slider knob at the juncture of his visual
cortex and the digital realm, a shifting that moved something
virtual in the thoughts of his software servitor—and disconnected
from the network. His transmission had been too intense, lacked the
touch of finesse he would have imparted had he not been rushed; he
chided himself for not being more careful, and consigned the anger
he felt towards BUZ4937 to memory, for later retrieval when
flavoring his hex-routines.
    The work he did for the Agency was far beyond
the cutting-edge of contemporary technology, computed and relayed
via the microchip implanted in his brain, and far more important
than anything else in the world: he invented thoughts for the
computer to act upon, gave them the spark of life in remote view,
and then let the machine chew them up into math and broadcast their
reverberations. He was directed by the planet's controllers, and
his will would be an extension of the highest authorities. In this
case, it was electronically-enhanced black magic, no matter what
you wanted to call it, that was the weapon he was to apply. He
didn't question the motive; he followed orders.
    He could afford no pity for his targets, no
matter what kind of shitstorm he sent after them, and he'd best to
add up any force-multipliers he could conjure if he wanted to make
it successfully through his probationary period. He did not care to
be assigned with this awful man, but he'd been ordered to the
assignment. He was just the extended arm of the machine, and the
target was a nail looking for a hammer. The machine put the hammer
into him and he did whatever was required of him. The difference
between him and Buzzsaw was his ability to bring that hammer down
directly and very precisely onto the nail it sought. The Buzzsaw
was a lout by comparison.
    "I'm familiar with the docket. I'm following
protocols."
    "Well, speed these protocols up. I notice
you're losing another asset. Way to manage your collaterals."
    "Who? Who am I losing?"
    "Subject six KR and all that bullshit, the
one with the talent-pool SO-pairing that you're supposed to be
handling. She's rejecting the implant."
    "I'm aware of that. Its outside my system.
I've got her managed while the A.I. fixes it."
    "You don't get your fucking job done, I will
bite you. Chomp-chomp."
    Seal shuddered involuntarily. Agent BUZ4937
was a lout but he did get results, he hated to admit. Perhaps the
A.I. had been right in pairing them for this mission.
    He closed his eyes, fingered the
touch-sensitive pad on his virtual keyboard, and concentrated on
the image of the slider knob. Well, here's to results, he thought,
and bumped the knob up another notch.
     
    Manny paced the halls of the county
courthouse; he