chapter 1, episode 1

"They're getting away in a miniature car!"

We were hanging from the ceiling when the miniature car sped by. I didn't see it until after it had passed. Rocco had but he didn't say anything. We probably couldn't have done anything, but it was mildly annoying nonetheless. That's the way Rocco was; a result of being raised in the mountains. He grew up observing phenomena that he knew he had no power to affect. He also tended to assume that everybody perceived the things he did. So there was no need to speak of them. I, on the other hand, had more of an urban upbringing. The lessons were different there.

"Did you see that?" I asked.

"Yeah. They're getting away in a miniature car.""

I couldn't hope to catch up along the ceiling, so I discharged my left eye. It fell about halfway down to the lushly carpeted floor of the executive hallway and then propelled itself forward down the hallway after the car. Two images floated in my mind. My left eye turned a corner and there was the car. It was a 1963 Jaguar Mark II, cherry red, about an inch and a half long. My left eye caught up to it, lowered itself down to the level of the passenger's side window. I zoomed in. George Bush was sitting there, hunched down, holding onto the seatbelt slung across his chest. In the driver's seat, Dick Cheney gripped the tan leather steering wheel, staring straight in front of him. Both of their heads looked a little out of proportion, too big for their bodies.

"Dick Cheney is driving," I said.

"I thought they were never supposed to travel together," said Rocco.

"That's what I thought. Maybe an android —" My eye was getting data back from its scans. Both bodies appeared to be mostly organic material.

Just then, Cheney reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a personal laser weapon. It was shiny with chrome and had a bulbous end; capable of taking down energy fields with sustained fire. The passenger side window lowered and George Bush slumped farther down in his seat. Cheney fired. My eye dodged the pink beam. The car and the eye were doing 30 clicks now, racing down the hallway. I could see George W. saying something to Dick Cheney. My eye was bouncing around too much for me to interpret the lip movement. Cheney had made a few hits, slightly depleting the eye's energy field.

"We've got incoming," said Rocco.

Spider bots were skittering along the corridor, hanging from the ceiling like us. Only they didn't have to dislocate their shoulders and hips in order to be able to move and look down at the same time. Their four legs swiveled on some kind of ball joint that allowed nearly universal rotation. On the ground, impeccably dressed executive response units, human and armed to the teeth, ran towards us.

"Let's get out of here," said Rocco.

"I'm going to wait for my eye," I said.

"Get another one."

"You go," I said. "I like this one. It's got a good mojo. I'll catch up."

Rocco crawled over to the vent through which we had first come in. "I'll see you on the roof," he said, popping his arms and legs back into their natural position.

"Tight sphincter," I said, closing my thumb around my tightly curled forefinger, in the universal symbol of efficiency.

I called my eye back. The car zipped past it, it's wheels bumping lightly over the soft shag. I had a final flash of George Bush's face. Something brown was dribbling down the corner of his mouth.

The guards and the bots were all closing in on me. I released my grip from the ceiling as four micro-missiles launched from the spiders mouths. In the air, I thrust my limbs forward, popping them back into place as my eye zipped between the wool trousers of the response units. I landed on my hands and knees, head looking forward. The men were ten feet from me. My eye was just ahead of them. Through it I could see me, crouched, one-eyed, the black socket like a waiting dock. Behind me, guns drawn, charged a phalanx of suits.

My eye popped into place, my vision resolved itself back into non-enhanced 3-d and single monitor. I jumped, going through the ceiling in an explosion of fiber and metal. I knew there were only two more floors above me. I just hoped I didn't hit a structural beam. I crashed through another hallway, empty except for a secretary seated at her desk. I had time to see her turn her head towards me before I went through the next ceiling, this time into a circulation room, then a layer of infrastructure, cables, housing, ducts, etc. before I crashed through the black tar and fine gravel of the roof.

Rocco had the module in the air already. He saw me pop out and glided it underneath me. I peaked about 40 feet above the roof. It was a beautiful day and the city gleamed beneath me...