Shadowrun:

Shadows of Salt Lake

Chapter 2

Franz moved through the underbrush of the forest like a predator.  He was determined to protect me while we both trained.  Being without our System Information Numbers it was tough to train at the rifle range.  Although the Lee Kay Center will allow us in – often without questions asked – the other rifle ranges found this to be problematic at best.   We canot always go to the Lee Kay Center.

Franz found a target and moved fast like a leopard.  I hardly could imagine anyone with a SURGE similar to his moving so fast in the morning light.  He pulled his Predator pistol and shot the target dead on.  I couldn’t believe it as he turned and made a wry smile.

However, I saw another target, and quickly threw a bolt of fire at it, causing it to burn in fire and flame.   Then I smiled.  We had to train, of course, to prepare for shadowrunning.  We had to train as a team, to hone our skills.

But Franz was astonished as well.  “How can . . . you . . . cast magic . . . without so much of a . . . word or a sign?” he asked in slow, heavily accented English.

“I don’t cast magic,” I replied.  But his reptilian eyes demanded an answer so I sought  to explain the Theory of Thaumaturgy as I understood it.  I took a stick on the ground and drew three circles.

“People say that there are two traditions of Thaumaturgy the face of the Earth.  They are Shamanism,” which I put a symbol of an ox in the middle, the Egyptian ox that eventually would become our A in the Roman alphabet, “and Hermeticism.”  I placed a simple Egyptian symbol for the sine wave – a snake in the second circle.

“People say that these are the oldest.  Shamanism stems from animal worship, the Hermetic tradition from Astrotheology – the science of Thoth, or the Science of Hermes Trismegistus.  Both of these traditions do date from Antiquity.”

I drew other symbols.  Placing a morning star in one, a cross in another, a pentagram in another, then a ying yang symbol, a tree, the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, a crescent moon, a Swashtika, a representation of Shiva, and a Shinto gate in another.  “These represent the various religions of the world.  The morning star represents Wicca or Witchcraft, the pentagram represents Black Magic, the Tree of Life, Qabbalistic Judaism; the cross, Theurgy; the ying yang, Taoist sorcery and alchemy; the swashtika, Jain magic; and et cetera.”

I drew the collection of circles along with Hermeticism and Shamanism in one big circle.  “This whole circle represents one important problem with these traditions, the reliance upon Spirits to work your magic.

“Shamanism is Animal worship, the worship of Animals.  Every shaman, whether they are of the Wilderness or of the Urban Environment have an animal Spirit – a totem – in which they derive their power.

“Hermeticism is Astrotheology.  Hermeticism stems from controlling the powers of the four elements.  Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire.  But they still summon spirits to derive their power.  Christian theurgists rely on Angels, and so on and so forth.

“All of these, except perhaps Theurgy, rely on a second agent in order to cast spells and work some of their magic.”

“So . . . let me get this straight,” Franz said. “All of . . . these traditions of magic rely . . . on spirits?”

“Yes,” I answered.  “They rely on the worship of God or gods in order to produce Miracles or magic.”

“What about . . .yours?” Franz asked.

I then went to the other circle, but before I did I asked frankly.  “Tell me, Franz, do you believe in God?”

Franz shook his head in a matter of fact way.  “I do not believe in God.  I felt that Science provided all the answers I needed.”

“Well, here is my tradition, the circle outside of the rest,” I explained.  I placed the greek letter psi, represented as such.

  “This is psionics – the tradition that stems from better Perception of the Self.

“The Psi tradition stands outside the circle because its different from the others.  The ‘magicians’ of my order typically do not summon spirits, and if it is needful we summon an angel – a true angel – for ministering and personal instruction.   For we don’t need to.  We do not worship animals, animal spirits.  We worship something else.”

“So . . . you worship . . . the self?” Franz asked.

“No, nothing of that in any case,” I said. “Worship of Man as the Divine is still a form of idolatry and a crutch.  Christianity worships Jesus Christ, for example.  Although I, myself, am a Christian as I have taken upon myself His name.  I call myself by His name – Christian.  However, I do not worship the Christ as my god.

“We worship a what, the source of Energy that expands and fills all space and all understanding,” I explained.  “This what is explained as God in his purest sense.  The New Age religion, from which a part of the Hermetic tradition derives it’s philosophy, calls this Prime Creator.  Scientists call it by different names: the Libido, Orgone Energy, Mana, and so forth.”

“Okay, so you . . .believe in a. . . god,” he said.

“Not just that,” I explained. “The nature of the organism is more than it’s biology, or its psychology.  We are divine, we are pieces of the Divine.  As such, we are vibrational beings able to affect and cause effect to the vibrations around us.  We are gods if you can get right down to it.  As such, my tradition does not espouse fear of the unknown.  We just simply create the effect, and the effect is created by a deliberate, conscious act of Creation.

“As such, as we are gods, we are actually Eternal and immortal and thus can never die,” I explained.  “When we die, we simply jump from the energy level experienced in this mortal life to a higher state of energy or consciousness.”

“Doch,” Franz said.  “But . . . what has this to do with . . . magic?”

“Us psions do not rely on spirits,” I matter of factly explained.  “We just simply collapse the Quantum Possibility Wave into conscious and pre-determined parameters.  What you would call a ‘spell’ I simply call a creation.  Magic is conscious creation, whether done for selfish reasons or unselfish reasons.  The only difference between the others and ours is Truth vs. Error.

“All the others are in Error in their approach to magic.  Especially after Howling Daniel Coyote changed everything,” I finally explained.  “With the turning of the Age, Howling Daniel Coyote brought back animism in a big way.  Just as Hermetic science was starting to be taught at major universities around the world.  My tradition went by the wayside, only being taught in a few universities: Oxford, Brigham Young, and so forth.  The other traditions aren’t less effective, of course.  But they are in error in their approach to magic.”

“Ach,” Franz said.  I got the feeling that he understood, at least partly, what I said.  Trying to tell someone who isn’t awakened these facts is often like trying to transmit radio waves through a brick wall.  I always understood Atheism to be foolishness, and the Atheists always said that my kind – the mystics – are also fools.  Trying to wake up others about Spirituality when all they believe is materialism is like trying to arouse a sleeping dragon.  Although, a sleeping dragon is usually more responsive.

Franz got up and stood upright.  Well, at least as upright as he could.  He stood digitgrade, meaning that his lower leg below the knee bent at an angle and until it reached his heal and then his foot bent at another angle until it reached his claws.  It almost like he has a second knee.  Franz can move silently when he wanted to.  But he was still capable of standing upright.

I stood plantigrade, like all humans or meta-humans.  But still, we left our private training ground and returned to our van so we could return home.

~ [ ~

Silvara was waiting for us, having prepared breakfast.  We returned to the wonderful smells of beef sausage, since I do not eat pork; eggs, fresh fruit, and potato hash browns.  “Master, you and Franz have returned!” she quipped excitedly.

“Yes, we have,” I said.  “Where is Mike?”

“Right here!” Mike said in Or’zet.  I, of course, understood him.

I said, “How is the breakfast?”

“Scotch eggs, strawberry yogurt, hash browns, and orange slices,” he said. “Our enemies would be jealous of our feast!”

I reveled in the harmonics of our home.  Last week, I completed the harmonizing – changing an awful din of vibrations into a harmony of vibrations.  Generally, the other three are better for it.  “And we have a world of enemies!” I said in Or’zet.  Mike laughed, I still mispronounced the words but at least he didn’t get on my back.  He knew I wouldn’t seek to become one of those ork poseurs.

“That we do, my good friend,” he said, switching to English.  “That we do.”

I switched back to English.  “So, what are the plans for tonight?”

“Robby, I thought we could finish with the office,” Mike said.  “I have to move my commlink into the office and make it official before I open my office for business.”

“How are we going to get started?” I asked.

“It’s simple enough,” he said.  “I’m sure we can get Shadowrunning contracts from various Mr. Johnsons.”

“Ich bin sicher, das ist alles schön und gut, aber diese scotch eggs sind lecker!” Franz declared in German.  We had no idea what he said other than the feeling of happiness.  It sounded like Franz was finally eating well and was happy about it. “Es ist gut, unter guten Menschen sein, als die tägliche gepeitscht werden.”

Silvara then said, “Master, I was browsing the matrix, and I found something I would like to go to.”

I looked at Silvara, wondering what she wanted.  “There is a symposium being attended to by the famous Sareärwen tonight.  Can we go, please?”

“Silvara, how can you browse the matrix without a commlink?” I asked suspiciously.

She giggled, and then turned serious.  “I don’t know, Master.  I only know I could do so after the Crash.”

I realized then what happened.  I boldly asked, “You’re a technomancer?”

Silvara nodded her canine head. “I have been since I was ten,” She explained.  “I can create things in the Matrix without need of a commlink, as if the Matrix was my holodeck or something.”

I only nodded.  It was a good thing that she was apparently protected from the slavers.  Her price would have gone up and a Corporation who would have done terrible experiments on her would have snatched her up.  Like in one of those horror stories from yester year, where the girl with special abilities is experimented on.

“Robby, what do we do?” Mike asked.

“She’s one with the Shadows now,” I said.  “We have to protect her from certain interests.”

Mike gravely nodded and spoke in Or’zet.  He typically speaks in Or’zet when he was gravely serious.  Technomancers were hot, no matter what the branch of meta-humanity.  Although the furor has died, there are still places where they experiment on Technomancers in order to understand how they could listen to the new Matrix.  Franz was taken aback from the revelation of Silvara.   He had a look of concern and fear.

“Sie ist eine Technomancer?” he asked in German with fear. “Sie konnte auf meine Meinung! Sie konnte meine Meinung zu hacken!”

I immediately got the word “hacken” to mean “hack” in parlance of decker jargon.  My own father was a decker once.  I concentrated on Silvara’s mind and I found myself inside the landscape of her mind.  I didn’t probe very far, it was almost like walking in a room of playthings and innocent toys, with prominent images of me displayed in special places.   Some of the images made me blush, after all.  I can tell they were from her imagination, some of them looked nothing like me.  And some even made me blush deeper, as they were imagined acts of intimacy between me and her.  I won’t go into details, that’s not why I was in her mind.

But I felt the hum of the Matrix, a slight alien buzz that only Silvara could decipher.  The buzz of the Matrix was in another room, a room I could not dare explore.  I broke the connection of my probe into her thoughts.  From the way she offered no resistance to my probe, I could tell that she trusted me completely.

“I don’t think she could hack minds, Franz,” I said.  “We can’t hear the Matrix, she can.”

“But ---“ Franz said in English.

I told him by projecting a powerful thought into his mind.  “She cannot deck your mind,” was my thought.  “Or do I have to perform an inception to release your fear?”

Franz was taken aback.  To find that I could enter his thoughts in a very personal manner shocked Franz.  I did it to remind him that I could get inside his head, and that I can put ideas into his head.  Did his fear switch from Silvara to me?  I cannot say.  Still, I was surprised how a piece of her mind acted just like the node on a commlink.  I was curious and someday, I will have to explore her dreamscape to understand what she thought about myself.

“Anyhow, Master, she’s presenting a seminar on protecting our wilderness from toxic pollution,” Silvara excitedly said.  “Can we go, please?”

I looked to Mike.  “I think we can do with a night out,” I said.

Mike said in English, “Yes, I believe some time out will get us ready for Shadowrunning.  Of course, we all have to dress our best.”

I despaired, but then . . .our best.  “Of course,” I said.  “Of course.”

~ [ ~

The ride into downtown was orderly and neat.  Contrary to other metroplexes, Salt Lake City’s driving reputation has cleaned up some.  Since being declared one of the worst drivers in the world, our world of drivers have cleaned up their act.  But then, it was late spring, early summer.

I was in white.  I looked like some kind of Arab sheik from the desert.  I did not wear a black tie, but then, who’d want to?  I wore a long duster made of cotton, with a shirt that had layers like a male kimono from Japan.  My pants were white also, except that my duster had azure trims of blue in a Doric pattern combined with a trim of gold.  My pants were the same way.  It’s like I dressed from some forgotten era – a distinctive style.  But I felt comfortable.

Mike wore a brown dress shirt made of silk with a red, narrow tie and a black sport coat with slacks.  He drove us to the hotel where the meeting was going to take place.  Mike had his short red hair set neat.  Silvara, who road beside me, was dressed in a beautiful red cocktail dress that accentuated her body.  Her tail, which is vestigal, was hidden in the dress but you can see it.  Her dress was lycra on top, and cotton on the bottom so she could move.  The dress was very short, revealing her long, muscular legs.  She wore red pumps and had a scarlet handbag.  I noticed that her clothes were AR enhanced, allowing her to access her Personal Area Network – or PAN.

I had no such thing on my clothes.  They had to be especially tailored without RFID tags or the commlink nodes sewn in.  Franz, however, was just Franz.  He changed his fundoshi, however, from one that was pure white to one that was stylishly dyed in a complex oriental pattern showing a phoenix against a seascape on a black background.  He wore his weapon harness, and a long duster coat.  He did not wear shoes and he did not wear gloves.  Although, I had a suit specially tailored to him too, for formal occasions such as this.  But it wasn’t ready.

I wore my hair long, but I gathered it into a neat ponytail.  My hair is dark brown, and my eyes are blue.  Silvara’s hair was a coppery blonde.  And Franz had no hair, after all, he was entirely bald.  Although some may wonder why he didn’t manifest feathers on his head during his SURGE.  I didn’t wonder that myself, as Franz was a humanoid Dienonychus, a dinosaur that came before the feathered ones.  If feathered dinosaurs were natural.

“I am so excited about tonight, Master!” she said.  I blushed, remembering her imagination about me and her; but then I realized that it is about Sareärwen.  “I’m going to be so happy to meet an environmental activist like her.”

“At least she isn’t fanatic about it,” I said.  “Like the Earth Liberation Front.”

“She’s trying to build awareness,” she said.  “She’s not trying to destroy industry.  But to limit industry.”

I activated my commlink to the Matrix and surfed the Matrix about her.  The program Browse works like the old Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; or even Apple’s Safari.  The augmented reality of the matrix is a projected screen in air, projected by the comlink.  Using AR gloves, I could manually manipulate the Browse program.  The screen was transparent, to say the least.  And it bent into a round shape.

There was a commlink node in everything now.  Well, except for my clothes, which doesn’t have RFID tags; nodes occupy small spaces in appliances around the house.  There are matrix nodes in my toaster, in my fridge, and even in my workspace.  I just use a commlink for browsing, and editing.  My real talent lies in manipulating the quantum possibility wave to what I can consciously create.

I found her personal blog.  Sareärwen, a daughter of two human parents, born in 2011 during the year magic returned.  She was an elf, and a pretty fetching one indeed.  She had blonde hair, some nice pointed ears, a wonderful enchanting smile, and nearly flawless skin.  In the picture, she wore a long evening gown that was modest and nice.  The gown was made of natural fibers that had sequins that glittered.   I smiled at her, admiring her beauty and wonder.  I continued to read.

She is a marine biologist, specialized in the behavior of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins.  When the waters off the coast of Portland, in the Tir, were fouled by an oil spill, she was there to help clean up.  She fought toxic spirits.  She then formed the Healing Terra Foundation after that incident.

Hmm, I browsed further hoping she was not a shaman.  I frowned.   Sareärwen is a shaman, a shaman of the Sea.  I should have known.  It seems that people like me are peculiar, but I had hoped that she had not fallen for that nonsense of needing a Spiritual Intermediary to learn and control magic.  I continued reading and then reported.

“Well, she is a shaman of the Sea,” I said.  “But she is also a Marine Biologist who is fighting for the preservation of the Sea as a natural resource.”

“Yes, isn’t she wonderful, Master?” Silvara asked.

“Indeed,” I said.  “Indeed.”

“It seems like . . .she is . . . fighting for the sea,” Franz said in his heavily accented and slow deliberate English.

Mike chuckled, “I’m just glad she isn’t a militant Shaman.”

I wondered why the Ecoterrorists who were shamans really were fighting for: awareness of our spoiling the natural places, or pounding us back into the Stone Age?  “Yes, Mike, I’m glad too,” I said.

We reached the Hilton hotel, and we got out.  The valet was stunned at the look of Franz, the humanoid Deinonychus.  Franz just smiled and the valet, startled, just took Mike’s keys and got in the sedan.  He drove the sedan away and into a parking lot below the hotel as we went in.

Silvara attracted most of the looks as she walked with her slave gait.  I noticed the thoughts of the men and women as we passed.  Thoughts of admiration came from the men, some of it directed at me.  However, the thoughts that came from the women were one of jealousy, hatred, and prejudice.  I even heard a woman’s thoughts that came in strongly – hussy, slut, bitch are the words that can describe what that woman’s feelings were.  Deep jealousy.  I was concerned, but Silvara was walking proudly.  I scanned for reactions to Franz, fear and intimidation. Then we walked up the stairs, and the thoughts of jealousy and admiration were greater due to how Silvara comported herself than the feelings of being intimidated by Franz’s fearsome appearance.

Franz smiled at this, but Silvara got some kind of pleasure from it.  She was a slave, she was proud being owned by me, and she wanted to please me at every moment.  She was proud of being called a slut, as long as she was my slut.  I really didn’t want to be reminded of this.

We entered the ball room, which had been partitioned off.  It was a large room to accommodate who was there to attend.  The walls were a flat gray, the carpet was a nice red.  The chairs were arranged nicely.  Nicely.  There were billboards, of course.  Various literatures in the form of pamphlets on how to save the planet from the wanton rape of mankind’s economic progress were handed out.

I grabbed a pamphlet on Sareärwen’s efforts and just sat took my seat.  We sat in the front, off to the corner.  How obvious we must have been.  I felt a lot of good positive energy here.  The lights grew dim and the first speaker came out.  I looked around the room and to Silvara, who sat down on my right.

You can be anything, I thought to Silvara.  You can be anything you truly want.  You can have anything, do anything, and be anything.  Why be a slave?