Flaser Posts

Those experiments dealt with artificially keeping the brain - or more precisely, the head - alive through artificial means. Unfortunately they offered no solution as to how neural damage - like a severed spine - can be mended. All they focused on, was whether the brain of the animals could be kept alive through purely artificial means.

[color=green]This is ridiculous, like a bunch of boyscouts![/color] Getting up the hit-man walked over to the kitchen counter, and let them have it straight:

[color=green]"Am I the only one who's freaked out that some Johnson just gathered us all up - and when I say us, I mean us, specifically as individuals - throwing around money as it grew on trees... while you still don't know anything about the job?

Here you are, chatting each other up, like a bunch of kids on a school-trip... >>[font=Tahoma]Hey, what what's your favorite band? Do you listen to Orcsploitation?[/font]<< ...are you people this dense, or did all this money dazzle your senses?

If I learned one thing in business, it's jobs that seem to good to be true, are. When the Johnson's this cavalier, you better watch your back... especially from your so called team-mates.[/color]

Very... very unlikely for the foreseeable, close future. Transplanting the brain would induce massive trauma on the organ, so the procedure would lead to even further brain damage. We're a long way away from cloning even organs, so a full body replacement is even further away.

The closest thing that has a chance is stem cell therapy. Stem cells are quite similar to the state the cells of a fetus are in, i.e. they can turn into various different *kinds* of cells depending on their environment. How stem cells differentiate and turn into muscle, skin or cells of organs is not yet perfectly understood, but we're getting there.

There have already been some successful, experimental therapies with stem cells. If you want your relative to get better, support stem cell research.

"Oh, go ahead and help yourself, your Ladyship!" - not bothering to get up, he bowed while sitting, rolling his hand as if to say, "go on, go on" and let the sleeve of his suit ride up, so she could glimpse the smart-gun that had been pointing at her temple while she snatched her booty.

"...and I believe we better postpone levity for now, doctor. There is a tide in the affairs of men, and I'd prefer if you took the literal meaning this time."

Paul was just about to light his cigar... and froze in place. Sandman?!? You Gotta Be Shitting Me, and I don't even have a WO! He took care to move... slowly. Wasn't she supposed to be a man? Since the cyborg didn't seem aware of him yet, he finished lighting his cigar, then turned to the dynamic duo and their errand boy.

"Color me intrigued, but one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" - he raised his hands, careful not to point them at the solo and theatrically shrugged as if to say, "you know the rest".

As things are about to heat up even more, the door opens and in walks Dussack. His gaze sweeps the Runners assembled while he removes and pockets the mirror-shades he wore for his trip.

"Leblanc?" - he inquires, with a nod to Victorique as she seems the best dressed, prissy and stuck up, as her face is still contorted in a frown of indignity. Not waiting for an answer, he strolls to the middle of the room, plopping down in an armchair of the dining table, so he dominates the space.

He's ending the war on drugs, because he's a libertarian and libertarians don't believe in *any* federal program.

However given what I've seen he's one of those "non-racists", who never the less nod-nod & wink-wink at all those racists when it comes to denigrating blacks and Hispanics. He associates with and was funded by some of the most hard-line racists organizations... but he's "not a racist"...

...please get real. Even if Ron Paul is not a racist, he wouldn't beat an eyelash if segregation and racist laws in the South were reintroduced and would say it's all OK., since these are "state laws" and the states can do whatever they want.

From the FAQ:

An auto-cab ride, a quick shower and shave later he was faced with an unusual dilemma: the job usually involved staying below the radar. Not this time. They already knew who he was.

Dressing servile would've been not only pointless, but hurt his chances at the bargaining table. His usual Mortimer suit, the Kevlar and chain-mail reinforced kind worn by bodyguards was out.

He had to advertise his talents for once... but there's not an outfit that screams "I'm a fucking Assassin!" and even if there was it would've been stupid, a sign of incompetence, going against the unsaid rule to remain invisible. He briefly considered a double-breasted coat with angular cut, the one fashionable with mercenaries and rich rent-a-cops... but that would've been a lie too, and a rather crass one.

Finally he settled on his flashiest, most high-society piece of garment, an Europa Invictus suit made of glitter-cloth with programmable tri-di inlays... and discreet Kevlar lining. Not as protective as the bodyguard piece, it'll have to do.

A black turtleneck, polished leather shoes and leather belt elegant in its simplicity completed the ensemble. Too flamboyant for CEO, too serious for playboy. An ultra-rich yuppie, the kind to whom common folk were below notice or dreck to be wiped off shoes. Arrogant enough to measure up against whatever smug triple-Asshole was sent to negotiate. Dressing was half the role...

He set the suit to bright colors, laced with two-tone patterns, checking that pure black was not among the combinations... he'd made that faux pas once, the memory still burning. Only Yakuza and mourners wore black.

For once, his tricked out Colt Government in its Arm-Slide was on his hand. This wasn't a hit-job, this was sticking his head into the lion's maw. For all he knew he might've to shoot his way out... and it's not like he's been told to come unarmed. His favorite brand of hold-out, a Morrissey Élan went into the holster at the small of his back.

The hitman considered calling a cab, but that'd have been too pedestrian for his current persona. He'd better arrive in style, it's not like he could indulge in such flamboyance every day. He took a cab to the Northwest Seaport and chartered a hydro-foil to drop him off, right at the Council Island Inn pier. The operator initially balked at the job, flashy suit or not, but a quick Com-conference with the Coast-Guards and Sidhe Security cleared the boat to the captains bewilderment. Thus a mere 45 minutes after receiving the note he was already walking into the Inn, the welcoming committee at the pier leading him as if his entrance was an everyday occurrence.... maybe it was. It certainly drew less attention then a beat up Honda being allowed into the high-castle of Seattle diplomacy.

Pocketing the paper without having looked at it, Paul headed for Matchstick's, pretending to be just another salary-man trying to survive his Zaibatsu's mandated drinking binge. Ordering coffee, he finally opened the paper... never read a note where others might see it or draw attention to it... sheeeeet.

It was low-tek, alright, but it's not like Vlad to just abandon SOP and contact him in such a transparent fashion... which meant he'd been tailed. Never a good, much less reassuring thing. Frankly it was infuriating and scaring the shit out of him at the same time. OK, calm down, think! ...Were you tailed? - colors shifted, and scenes of the night blurred in his vision... Anyone appearing multiple times? Facial & Gait recognition initialized... Searching... 3 matches...

Matches? Amateurs tended to panic at this moment... Let's check... He eliminated the first two matches as they were transportation employees... the third was a suit who changed lanes with him twice, but dropped away later on. No tell-tale signs of changing watch, but in the age of wireless communication that didn't mean anything... I have a nagging feeling, a black, three meter tall ork with a T-shirt that says "Gay Pride", wearing leather pants is not the most likely candidate. Corps are too homophobic, racist and tight-assed for that.

...that left Vlad. It was incredulous, but apparently the Fixer's been had. I'll take it up with the Russian later on. He ran a scan on the messenger's cloth but there was no match... so the guy hadn't been masquerading as a patron of the bar. Sheeet... and double sheeet. They must've infiltrated Vlad's cameras then... Conjecture faulty. Observer lacks relation linking Vlad to User to Johnson.. Along with the nausea always brought on by the AI borrowing his faculties came unexpected relief. So the Commie didn't unintentionally sell me out. Of course that was no guarantee Vlad didn't sell him intentionally... but for some reason he could never give the thought credence. The Russian hated him too intimately for such an impersonal betrayal. Finally it hit him: they already had him ID-d. Once Vlad sent a confirmation of the job, they didn't bother with the polite fiction of the Fixer's mediation.

I'm already neck-deep... they've probably chosen me for what they had in mind. Unless I literally change face running away won't do any good either.

Even on a determined course, freedom may yet exist... Speed. - this felt different. Not quite nausea... he didn't have a word for it. It was different... the AI never made emotional correlations before. He heard these words a long, long time ago... the only reason it could bring them up was that was the last time he'd felt this cornered.

"Speed indeed. Time to punch it to light-speed and see if I can break course." - he said aloud, as if doing so would make it true. You never knew, magic did exist after all.

Read about comissioning translations here.

In the future, please post requests in the Requests section.

You do realize that the "Ultimate List", refers to 3rd edition books & equipment? It's your game, it's your rules I just thought I add this in case people are confused.

Dropping off monorail at Seattle Center, Paul decided to hoof it the rest of the way. He could afford to amble and wander around like a tourist, it's not like he could get lost, the Needle was visible wherever one went.

He strolled down 5th Avenue, window shopping, the sea of meta-humanity flowing around him even at this late hour. If one was content to merely watch without seeing, they could believe all was well with the world with the Great Crash a distant myth in the pass. Deep, brassy rythms were spilling onto the street from glass dance floors of (Dante's) Inferno, the youth living it up, not a care about the world. He always wondered how they could get their permit what with the Downtown Library just a street down... enough bribes to Metroplex a street further down wis his guess.

At a whim, he switched over to the 4th to browse the classifieds at Dassurns. Not like going 'corp was in his plans, but it was good to keep tabs on the competition. Some drunk students were calling it a night, returning to the YMCA, the Dassurn guards eying them warily. Lonestar's Blue pyramid loomed above, reminding all whom the *real* enforcers of the city were.

He returned to the 5th at Union street, the Post Office on the corner just as decrepit as the Unions all around the world. Elven bouncers ambled by the doors of Westin, the hotel getting a fair number of visitors even at such late hours. Some further streets down business was booming in Nukit, but he had something better in mind than fast-food. From here, Tam's was already visible to those who knew what to look for. The Needle dominated the area. Crossing the small park by Tam's he descended the abandoned Subway station on Cedar street.

Real tobacco fumes hit him as he descended the streets. Old Russian Avate Guarde blared from the speaker, Nautilus Pompilius and classics like Vysotsky's Paper Soldier. The National Bolshevik posters were just as authentic as the barman and the vodka. He collapsed onto a barstool and barked, "Sto Grammu".

"...I won't give you slavs any of the good stuff, even if you ask in Russian" - came the gruff reply.

Vladimir hated his guts. The Russian, like a lot of his ethnicity was stocky and sturdily built. Graying at the temples, he kept his hair short-cropped, so the scars the FSB interrogators left him stood out.Parallel lines bit into his cheekbone and left a gap in the furrow of his brows. The right eye was obviously cybernetic, worn like a badge of honor.

"Then, just give me a damn whiskey on the rocks, Communist pig!"
"Fucking slav!" but Vlad was pouring the stuff anyway, and good stuff too.

Vlad used to be an opposition activist, until things heated up way too much and he had no choice but leave the country. That was around the time when FSB executed Limonov and the prominent heads of the opposition.

"Just pour! ...and I'm telling you for the last time, I'm no slav!"
"You lived among slavs, you fucked slavs... you're slav as far as I'm concerned!"

The glass came hurtling down the bar, almost knocking over the drinks of other patrons.

"I'm Finn-Ugor, you dumb Cossack, you just pretend I'm a slav since my Finnish brothers kicked your ass." ...the glass hurtled over the edge, and several voices gasped in outrage.

He caught it midair with ease. The on-lookers approved with quiet murmur. Russians took alcohol seriously. Several bore scars from bar-fights that broke out over such matters. Vlad included, a criss-cross of scars prominent on the hand that tossed the drink.

"...the devil you are, you Hungarians are slavs, you have to be after a thousans years. We beat you after all!"

Vlad guffawed, as if he just told a good joke. In case you wonder, he hated the Russians' guts in turn. Downing the last drops, he slammed the glass down.

"Just pour, you Commie."

Refilling, Vlad raised his own and the glasses clicked with a musical chime. Their ritual done and over with, they could now turn to business. They hated each other's guts, but respected each. In this strange age, one had to nurture hatred almost as much as love... it was precious, the knowledge that somehow the other was giving a damn about you.

"So..." - he started.
"So what?" - came the flippant retort.

An annoyed look plastered on his face, he gave the barmen the evil eye... then shrugged. It's better not to get riled up, or the Russian would've derived all too much pleasure from the deal. Lighting a Blue Calm laced cig, he leaned back on his stool, nursing the drink for now. His fun cut short, Vladimir settled for swiping a cig from his pack on the counter, and finally giving the spiel straight as the smoke swirled around them... so much for eavesdropping on laser.

"...so I heard some little bird whisper, you might have some stuff for me."

Puffing on the cig some more, he balanced his options. Little bird meant, the job was confidential, even more so than usual and he'd likely never even meet the Johnson. Stuff meant something more involved than a hit or plain wet-work.

"Little birds are like that, they sing all kinds of promising songs, yet winter still comes." ...he brought the box out of his pocket while speaking.

Flipping the lid open, Vlad was browsing the stuff as he replied:

"The bird was right in this case... You're a fucking slav, but you know your... cigars."

...so Vlad didn't know anymore about what the job might entail. If he did he would've said Havanas or Cuban cigars.

"Yeah, yeah... now about my part...."
"Easy slav... you sure, this will be enough? A dozen cigars?"

So the job didn't come cheap. Fine.

"Puh-lease... Who do you take me for? It's the sample, the rest are sealed."

The fixer will get the rest his payment when he confirmed the job.

"Harumph... They better be. I prefer my stuff, moist and tender..."

So it's a well paying job, but the barman agreed to the setup.

"Will you take Malt or Rye? I don't have any of the Corn shit on me."

Will you take the job? No look & see... take it or leave it... darn. He didn't like jobs like these.

"Depends on the vintage."

How much do they pay?

"Both are straight."

They pay much... but passing this by might be wise... hmm...

"How old is the malt?"

How reliable is the source?

"Five year old, you rascal... I gotta give it to you slav, you know your whiskey."

So they're reputable. Reputable for what though? Here goes nothing.

"Gimme the malt, oh and here's another dozen for the age." - he gave the barman another box of cigars.
"Right. Don't suck up to me slav, I hat brown-nosers."
"...and I hate Russian sons of bitches who water their malt. Think of it as down payment on the next one."
"Sure, whatever..."

Vlad ducked below the counter, and Paul could hear the spin-clack of his safe. A moment later the bottle stood on the counter.

"There, it's waste on slavs like you, but honest man no longer appreciate a proper drink nowadays."
"Sure, my heart bleeds for your troubles Vlad, cry me a river. It's not like you don't sell syntohol to most your patrons as the noobs won't know the difference either way."
"Get out of here slav!"
"Get stuffed, Commie!"

Downing the last of his malt, he retrieved his cigs before Vlad could bum yet another one and he sunk the bottle into his coat. The details of the job will be on the chip embedded in the bottle's cork. As far as on-lookers were concerned, all they saw was some smuggling exchange... which was true. The straight malt was five years old, and if he was looking forward to getting plastered by it. So were the cigars... it'd take a particularly curious soul to match the lot numbers on the boxes to certain bank accounts. An AI could do that... if it had wide-spread access to several banking systems. The brand of the cigar dictated which bank, the kind - royal, quarter, half - the type of the account. Vlad will get his real payment when he releases the money in those accounts for whomever has the access number that happens to be the lot number of his whiskey.

Medicine manufacturing is almost completely automated, so this is one of the few areas where outsourcing is not so much an issue. (Lost tax revenues are).

However both of you are ignoring the fact, that it was privatization that has started the rising prices... which should be obvious to anyone who uses common sense to think about it instead regurgitating Chicago School Economics 101.

What did privatization introduce to the system? Participants who were in it for a profit. Hospitals try to charge as much as the insurance industry can bear, instead how much the procedures actually cost. The insurance industry in turn have jacked up the prices of their products and try to lower costs by outright denying procedures... and in the end, it's Joe Average who gets to foot the bill in one form or another.

Countries with national health-coverage tend to have a lot lower medical costs, since the whole system is geared toward minimizing costs instead of maximizing profit. The two are *not* the same, and as I keep stressing this, in the real world, the unrestricted market doesn't produce an optimum.

The task of government is to allocate the resources of the nation under its control to best ensure the welfare of all, that's true... however unless you specify how, your statement is just another meaningless slogan.

Do we give to the rich and promote enterprise? Do we give to the poor and promote wealth-fare? How do we measure the worthiness of the individual when it comes to government assistance? How do we measure the effectiveness of the government assistance itself? Even the rich receive massive government assistance in the form of the laws, courts and police that enforce the business standards on the national, and in the form of defense on the international level.

You've so far failed to give any kind of answer to these questions... which is no wonder, as you're an angry young man without the life experience or the patience to listen to the stories of elder generations.

It's my bad though, that I took you for a Randroid, when you yourself stated you're a Fascist in your "Thesis"... though my mistake was an honest one, for your ideology is just as irrational as hard-line libertarianism. Just as Marxists and Randroids, you Fascist also cling to the fairy tale theory that since the "Perfect Communist/Libertarian/Fascist Revolution" has yet to pass, no system truly embodied your ideals... which is useless drivel. When measured with such a stick, no government on Earth will ever measure up. I recommend you re-read what I posted about Lipsey-Lancaster theorem which explains the problems with these very notions.

Pay attention, ladies and gentleman! You see here prime Randroid speciman!
He demonstrates why civilized people call hard-line libertarianism the Marxism of the right:

Communism <-------------------------------> Libertarianism
Property is theft <------------------------> Property is sacred
Totalitarianism <-------------------------> Any government is bad
Capitalists are baby-eating villains <----> Capitalists are noble Nietzchean heroes
Workers should rule <---------------------> Worker activism is evil
The poor are oppressed <------------------> The poor are pampered good-for-nothings

This comparision was made by Mark Rosenfelder. I've changed the formatting to fit the forum.

"If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society." - Robert Locke on the Amercian Conservative

It's just as radical as the hard-line radicalism of the left, Marxist Communism was. Just like Communism, its methodology isn't much different either: oppose the obvious evils of the world with a fairy tale. The communist of 1910 couldn't point to a single real-world instance of his utopia; neither can the present-day libertarian. Yet they're unshakable in their conviction that it can and must happen.

Libertarians love abstract, fact-free arguments-- often, justifications for why property is an absolute right. LustulAngle just made a handful of broad and generalized claims about FDR, the New Deal and wealth-fare measures in general. Unlike me, he didn't cite *any* sources.

Truth to tell, I didn't back up all my claims either, but I don't want to turn this into a pissing contest as to who can quote more obscure IRS trivia entirely taken out of contest. By comparison though, I did name some of the sources I referred to.

I could write more, entire pages, essays and so on, but it has already been done.
Instead let me end this with a quote from FDR:

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

What I find disgusting is little Randroits like you trying to recast history as something that it was not. You're blaming all the ails of the country on liberals and the left, when it was the rich that have robbed the coffer, submerged the welfare state, so instead elected officials, business (and the rich) got to manage its apparatus.

On one hand the oligarch preach about the free market above all, ferociously fighting any and all attempts that would regulate them... on the other, they're busy sucking the welfare teat of the state. Billions of dollars go to subsidies each year. By privatizing commodities like water the oligarchs get to reap their profit even on stuff that should be free for all as they are providing no real service... in fact they've been proven to be worse managers than the so called "bloated state", having to be bailed out time and again as they've grown "too big to fail".

If you--

• have never heard of (or don't think much of) Rothbard, Rockwell, Rand, and von Mises

• accept that the FDIC is a pretty good idea

• want a leaner, more efficient government, but don't dream of getting rid of it

...then what I wrote isn't really addressed to you. You're probably more of a small-government conservative; and if you voted against Bush, we can probably get along just fine.

However what Lelouch24, LustfulAngel and Ron Paul and his libertarian friends are promoting are something else entirely. They want to dismantle the state and turn back the clock to the times when capitalism was totally unrestricted.

All around the world this was accompanied by massive exploitation of the workforce, hazardous work environments, little to no consumer protection - read Upton Sinclair's jungle to see what went on in the Meat industry for instance - and massive fraud and corruption in finance that eventually lead to the Great Crash and Great Depression.

Once Reagen and his cronies dismantled and co-opted the last bastions of Roosevelt's legacy the same thing happened. We have a new state religion: The FREE MARKET, that KNOWS BEST, DOES BEST and CAN DO NO WRONG.

Sadly reality differs. The market didn't police itself. The free market paradigm just DIDN'T WORK! It's based of axioms that not only don't exist in real world, but acting on these assumptions have been harmful rather than beneficial. Yet the priests of the market keep preaching and people swallow their lie hook, line & sinker. For all the mathematical trappings, economics is NOT a HARD SCIENCE. It has models and the models work because... well, we assume they do! Even when the models don't work, they're still used.

When will we finally wake up and realize we have been Econned?

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." - John Mayard Keynes

Their failings are numerous. Quote from "Econned" written by Yves Smith:

• Overconfidence. Economists have undue faith in their theories and analyses.

• Drunk under the street light syndrome. This is based on the oft-told joke of the drunk who looks for his keys under the street light, where he can see better, rather than where he lost them. Economists restrict their inquiry to where the established, familiar methodologies function well, neglecting areas and information that are troublesome.

• Biases. The desire of economists to turn economics into a hard science has required that certain assumptions be made. But the outcomes depend on the hypotheses. To put it differently, the risk that the assumptions determined the results isn’t treated as seriously as it should be. One reason this is a danger is that economics doesn’t simply rest on the axioms one often hears mentioned, like “perfect competition,” but also deeper assumptions that undergrid some approaches, yet are seldom subject to scrutiny. The result is that the professional ambitions of the discipline in fact produce significant biases and blind spots, the most serious being uncertainty and instability.

• Inappropriately large political role. Economists have come to hold a position that is dangerous in a democracy. Their use of science-like procedures gives them authority that is often unwarranted. Even though they like to cast themselves as benign umpires, they wield far more influence. Moreover, as individuals, they usually have a clear position on the right/left spectrum that is reflected in their recommendations. Power without accountability is a dangerous position for any group to hold in a democracy.

"Already, in 1956, R. G. Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster published “The General Theory of the Second Best,” also known as the Lipsey-Lancaster theorem. Recall that the situations that economists stipulate in theoretical models are idealized, usually highly so. Consumers are rational and have access to perfect information. There are no transaction costs. Goods of a particular type are identical. Capital moves freely across borders. Using these assumptions, or similar ones, the model is then shown to produce a global optimum. This highly abstract result is then used to argue for making the world correspond as closely to the model as possible, by lowering transaction costs (such as taxes and regulatory costs) and reducing barriers to movements of goods and capital.
But these changes will not produce the fantasy world of the model. Doing business always involves costs, such as negotiating, invoicing, and shipping. Capital never moves without restriction. Buyers and sellers are never all knowing, and products are differentiated. Despite the pretense of science, it is a logical error to assume that steps that realize any of the idealized assumptions individually move the system closer to an optimum state. The Lipsey-Lancaster theorem examines this thinking and proves it to be false.
The article shows, first in narrative form, then with the required formulas, that if all the conditions for the ideal state cannot be met, trying to meet anything less than all of them will not necessarily produce an optimum. Partial fulfillment of equilibrium conditions may be positively harmful, forcing the economy to a less desirable state than it was in before. Thus simple-minded attempts to make the world resemble hypothetical optimizing models could well make matters worse.
In general, outcomes at least as good as any “second-best” reality can result from a wide variety of different policy choices. So, while abusing rarified economic models to grope toward a unique hypothetical ideal can be harmful, many different messy policy choices can lead to improvements over any current, imperfect state. There is no one, true road to economic perfection. Trudging naively along the apparent path set forth by textbook utopians may lead followers badly astray, despite the compelling simplicity of the stories they tell."

A SUV blew past, some headbanger music blaring into the night, obscenities flooding all AR devices foolishly left unsecured.

[color=green]I'm getting too old for this.[/color] Funny. A couple of years ago, he'd have been content to add his own shout to cacophony. [color=blue]Rashness is the characteristic of youth, prudence that of mellowed age, and discretion the better part of valor.[/color] He shuddered as the disembodied notion, like a foreign body stuck in a wound, reinforced the feeling of "other" in his psyche.

[color=green]Great...it's at it again.[/color] He was dying to drown it out in alcohol fueled bliss, but alas that had to wait. He lit up a Razor laced cig instead, the mild drug giving his attention the necessary focus.

[color=green]13... 14... 15... [/color] - the apartment doors went by in monotone order. A door flew open ahead.

"Fuck you! I'm leaving, you hear!"
"You always say that! You'll be back begging for it 'morrow..."
"Bastard!"

The girl took off, and he briefly considered scraping it then and there... it's better not to have witnesses of any sort. He leaned against the rail, blowing out smoke to obscure his face... the girl stormed by, tears smearing her face, turning the mascara into some war-paint. He nodded to the orcish girl as if to say "What's up?" ...face averted in shame she left without a word. He doubted whether she saw him et all.

Good.

[color=green]16... 17. This is the place the girl just left. Looks like she's not gonna get "it" anymore even if she begs.[/color]

Leaning on the door, he inhaled the last of the cig, enjoying the tranquility the drugs carry, the Zen of the ritual. Dropping the butt he rapped on the door:

"SPD! Open up!"
"Sod off! I already paid this week!"
"This is SPD Homicide, open up!"
"Whaaaa...."
"There was a murder nearby, I'm taking statements, now open THE FUCK up!"

Some shuffling could be heard, then the rattle of the locks. Senses expanding, his hand drops to the hold-out as the door swings open. Stale beer, the sweet, coyly smell of unwashed bodies and something rotten beneath assaulted him, a television blaring in the background with the hiss of an unpatched pirate-decoder ululating in the lower registers.

"I didn't see nothing! You hear! Frankie, saw nothing, hear nothing, I told your pal... that... that... Hey! You're no-cop! Where's your stuff?!"

The hands mimicked the hat & vest of city police. Tall. Watery eyes... disheveled hair, gaunt frame. Might be called pretty, but the gut hanging out dispelled whatever air of nobility Frank had about him. [color=green]Whoever said elves are all pretty & graceful should see this[/color] - he thought. Instead he turned to the elf and said:

"I told you, I'm with Homicide, we work in civvies. Here, lemme show you my badge..."

Frank leaned in while the hitman's hand left the coat. 5.6 milimeters... the elf stared at the barrel uncomprehending. "FRAAAP! FRAAP!" - the gun barked loudly, the elf collapsing in heap as the .22 bullets bounced inside his head.

Most consider the caliber a child's toy as it lacks the necessary power to reliably penetrate. The same lack of power ensured that the bullets just kept bouncing inside the skull instead burrowing their way out. A surprisingly many people survived direct head-shots, even from large calibers... not in this case.

Peering out, over the railing, he checked the levels below... empty for now. Leaping, he landed on the opposite floor below, then leaped again and again, pocketing the hold-out mid-air. He walked the rest of the way to the exit casually. No one checked what was going on. The boon of violent TV, people no longer gave a damn about gunshots.

The local youth took care of the foyer camera and they also kindly smashed the main door off its hinges. All it took, was to tag the house with the logo of a rival gang. Without the camera out, his visit should leave no clues for the police.

He took a bus, then changed lanes, then took the sub. Only then did he turn his comlink's Matrix access back on. It'd have been stupid to get caught by simple signal triangulation. Granted, he was using a borrowed SIN and his PAN's IDs were also doctored... but it was better not to tempt fate in the first place.

[color=olive]"I've had my UPs and DOWNs, now I'm looking for STRANGE & CHARMING."[/color] - he placed the ad in a local paper. 5 minutes later the funds arrived in his account, having been funneled through various accounts.

He tossed the hold-out out the window when the sub went into a decrepit passage... time to find a bar and drink himself into a stupor.

I'm on GMT+1. DST may mess things up a tad. I'm usually available and on-line in the late afternoons.

What do you mean, "lower 48", could you elaborate?

I'm very much pro-nuclear, but frankly the tech used nowadays is outdated. There hasn't been any significant research into reactor designs since the '60 and right now the whole industry is locked into a very inefficient and wasteful model.

The efficiency of (most) current is about 0.5%. CANDU reactors can do 0.7%. Both of these figures are terrible.

We could do a lot better, it'd take about a billion dollars to get the first 4th generation reactors into commission: