Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 10:36:16
From: Guy Trache <pfantazm@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Procurers, Part 6

The Procurers - Part 6

By Pfantazm

~~~

Author's Note:  This story contains depictions of the future.  If they are
proved to be inaccurate several hundred years from now, enh, that's
science fiction for you.

The characters in this story have unprotected sex, with the basic
assumption that anything that can do them in will have been cured by the
time the story takes place.  If you think you can hang on that long
(especially given the previous disclaimer about accuracy), then, by all
means, follow their example.  Otherwise, stay safe.

Direct interpersonal contact is feasible via pfantazm@hotmail.com.  To
access and review other documents of a similar derivation to the one
herein, locate the relevant directory at
www.pridesites.com/pfantazm/index.html.

~~~

1.6 - THE ZYMOBIUS FILE

As Scott's car pulled up to the spacedock, Minder informed him that a call
was coming in from JaSonJa.

"Tell him that I'll call him back in five.  Perfect timing as always,
JaSon."

The data miner passed through Customs again and hurried on his way to
_Daybreaker_.  Meicross, he was sure, would not be around.  _Daybreaker_
was parked at an orientation that left his pilot's chair mounted
sideways.  Since there was nothing else to occupy him on the ship other
than his duties, he'd be off in town.

That same parking job left his workstation normally vertical and fairly
drenched in gravity.  Despite the familiarity of the room, it felt
uncomfortable to be that heavy there.

Scott initiated a com to JaSon, who answered in short order.  Geek that he
was, even he needed advice on the world of computing.  If anyone knew what
Scott needed to know, this would be the person.

"Can't happen."

"Nice to see you too, JaS.  Can't happen?"

"Can't happen.  Whatever you're trying to rig up, no one has done it
before, and I'm not even sure anyone has come close."

Scott sighed.  "Hate to say you're wrong, but did happen.  Not only have I
seen such a file in action just today, but I have another such file in my
archives.  Dr. Zymobius had one kicking around."

JaSon's soft, nearly feminine features wrinkled slightly as he took in
this new information.  "You're bullshitting me."

"Hey, I'd pass you a copy, but it's too valuable to me this very second to
lose.  Besides I've promised the thing to someone else."

"You what?"

"I have 48 hours to crack it and figure out what its mojo is, or I lose
the thing.  Please, go back and do the search.  Also see if this UID..."
Scott passed Evan's Universal Identifier over, "has anything to do with
it.  He's the one with the other file."

"Ack.  This one's on me."

"Oh, no," Scott said, smiling.  "That's how I got myself into this mess.
I didn't check the file before agreeing to give it away at no charge.  I'm
paying, just in case you find something."

"What happened to 'double my fee'?"

Scott laughed.  "Alright.  Double if you actually find anything.  It'll be
worth it.  Single if you come up empty."

"Deal," JaSon said.  "You better get started if you only get 48 hours.  I
don't even know how I'd begin to design something like that."  But Scott
could see in his eyes that he'd already done so.

"Signing off."  They each closed their connections.

Scott began to prepare his workstation for the task ahead.  He called up
the names of some of the reverse engineering software he would need, and
he unpacked the bitbox and doggie bag from the restaurant.  A background
program in Scott's implants provided the phrase 'greasy spoon', complete
with definition to sink into his subconscious.

He'd been in such a hurry to leave, he hadn't even touched his salad.  It
seemed he wasn't missing much.  The lettuce looked thin and positively
anemic.  The tomato was a red, gritty mush.  Scott wasn't even sure it was
real plant matter.  While the programs were loading, he peered into the
container.

Data, some alarming numbers, flickered in his vision where only he could
see them.  He leaned down closer to the dish for somewhat better
magnification.  His eyes refocussed, and more numbers came.

"Minder, search the 'net for microbug detection software compatible with
_Daybreaker_'s systems.  Use the salad on my workstation table to test
them.  Tell me everything you can about the one in there."

>Searching....

				   * * *

Evan hid the airbike and crept back to the abandoned levels of the
building where he and OJ had been hiding for the past few days.  It was
gutted in places, and the external plasticrete was crumbling.  This was
the reason they were hiding there:  lots of opportunity to get out from
lots of directions.  Evan picked up a chunk of the chalky, but tough,
stuff and rammed it against the wall a few times.  It made a distinctive
clunking sound whose echoes could be heard a long way away within the
building.

He heard OxygenJim crawl out of his hiding place.  He rushed over to Evan
and hugged him.  Evan didn't let go until OJ did first.  "How did the
meeting with Quinn go?" the redhead asked.

"I'm pretty sure I got him.  I even weaselled him into a spot where he
figures he only has a few days to figure things out.  There's no way he'll
crack it that fast.  He told me as much.  When his time is up, I'll have
him."

"You think he's interested enough not to give it up when he's agreed to?"

"Oh, yeah."  Evan smiled.  "Let's go inside.  I want to relax."

They went through a couple of doorways to one of the internal rooms where
they'd found some abandoned furniture.  There was a single bed whose
stuffing material had all but fallen out, and a gel couch that was missing
its back.  OJ slept on what was left of the couch, with his head on the
armrest.  Evan usually took the rather lumpy bed, and took it with his
usual even temper.  It was the least he could do for OJ after getting him
in the mess they were in.  He tried not think of any other friends he
might have disappeared on.

This afternoon they shared the gel couch.  They sat facing each other,
Evan with his legs spread and one foot on either side of the couch, and OJ
leaning forward and cross-legged.  "So, tell me everything!" Jim asked.

Evan summarized the conversation they'd had, from their first meeting to
when Quinn had hurried away to try to meet the deadline he'd set.

"You called him a chiphead?" OJ said, dismayed.

"Yeah, it, uh, kinda slipped out.  He didn't act like he noticed."

"Well, he was trying to figure out his file at that point, wasn't he?  If
he does have implants he noticed.  The foremost benefit of getting
cerebral implants is enhanced memory.  You'll have to be sure to be extra
polite to him from now on."

Evan grinned.  "You say that like you think I don't know how to play
nice.  You know better."  He got up and leaned forward over OJ, edging him
backwards into his armrest.

Jim smiled up at Evan.  "Oh, I know you can play nice.  On the other hand,
we don't know if he's into guys, or into you."

"Hmmm.  Now there's something I didn't think of.  The three of us partying
on his spaceship.  Guys like him, all business, really uptight, can be the
most fun to loosen up.  Then again, he didn't even look at Hatcher."

"Oh, you went to the East Side Eatery?  Hatcher always did look good.  And
Quinn?  How did he look?"

"Well, shorter than me, say about one-metre-seven-oh, thin but not
starving, classical look.  Handsome.  Business haircut and socially-
acceptable brown-and-brown coloration.  You usually go for the
intellectual types, not me."

OJ laughed.  "Oh, so *I* should seduce him so we can get a ride with him."

"No, you should sleep with me so I can ride you."  He started undoing OJ's
shirt.

"Oh, how romantic."

They undressed each other, and when they were done, the weight of Evan
pressed Jim into the couch.  They made out with each other.  OJ's fingers
dug shallow depressions into the familiar hills of muscle on either side
of Evan's spine.  Evan's thigh pressed intrusively between Jim's legs,
forcing them apart.  The copper-haired man wriggled seductively under
Evan's frame, and his moist cock rubbed against his leg and across his hip.

Evan feasted on OJ's slender neck.  The psych's head rolled back over the
armrest, yielding more space for Evan to graze on.  Jim panted, as his
friend's well-tuned body bucked against him, his hot cock working back and
forth along his side, and Jim's own equipment grinding into Evan's quads.

OJ reached up and held Evan's nipple between two fingers, pinching it and
twisting it gently.  A low moan erupted from Evan's throat, and he pressed
his hand against Jim's chest.  The black-haired fugitive's body arched,
and now his tongue and lips were caressing OJ's own tit.

Jim reached down and shifted his sex partner's cock in its course across
his body.  He budged and trapped the long, hot dick between his own legs,
so that when Evan humped his muscular frame against his, the cockhead
bumped against OJ's ass.

Now that it had been given a target, Evan's sex homed in and drove
harder.  As Evan's body shifted, he got closer and closer to the soft
pucker that led into OJ's body.  Soon, Evan was leaning over OJ, with one
of his legs help up over his hip, and Evan's heat was tapping insistently
at Jim's entrance.

"Turn over," he whispered.

While OJ got out from under him, Evan grabbed the lube from the table
next to the couch, and squirted some onto himself.  OJ settled himself on
his knees on the couch, his ass in the air and his arms braced against the
solid gel-filled arm.  Evan laid his hand on OJ's ass, his fingertips
surrounding OJ's balls.  He stroked OJ a few times, causing him to rock
back and forth against his hand.  Then Evan poured lube onto his fingers
and teased the redhead's hole again.

In no time at all they were ready and the pair were spooning on their
knees.  Evan's manhood eased deliberately through the first of Jim's
defenses.  Both men sighed as the bulbous cockhead pierced the muscle.

Evan reflected that despite the number of times the two of them had had
sex, for any of a thousand reasons or for no reason at all, there was
always still a freshness.  The elements were all there:  the feel of Jim's
chute as his shaft made its way inside, the sudden feeling of sweat on his
forehead, the sensation of the skin on OJ's back against his chest as
their hips rocked in synchronization.  OJ reached back to touch Evan's
hip, a tender gesture that he wasn't even sure he was aware of.  Sex does
not get boring, Evan knew, or else the worlds would not be here.

Evan pawed Jim's flat stomach.  Jim groaned and laid his head on Evan's
shoulder.  Evan's stiffness smacked wetly as his pace quickened.  A stray
gust of wind, whipping through the towering structures beyond the broken
walls, swept over the two men's gyrating forms.  Jim shivered slightly at
first, then more violently, sending sympathetic vibrations down Evan's
length and into his spine.  Evan twitched in response, jamming against
OJ's sweet spot more forcefully than usual.  The redhead's muscles spasmed
and he found that he was spilling his seed across the armrest and onto his
fingers, flinging white cream everywhere.

"Now I can really go," Evan murmured into his friend's ear.  He gripped
his body tight against him and his fucking kicked into a higher gear.  As
he sped up the last dregs of Jim's spunk were wrung from his body.

Any other time, OJ thought, it seemed like Evan tried to cum at around the
same time as he did.  This time, all OJ could do was hang on to his
armrest and hold on for the ride.

Evan was pumping his ass like a man possessed.  Jim felt the slap of his
friend's hips against his cheeks, his balls crashing into his own again
and again.  He turned his head and saw Evan's head was bowed.  OJ figured
he was staring down at himself, as his lovely cock disappeared into him,
only to peek out, then hide away again.

For another ten minutes or so, they went on like that, strong, dark Evan
relentlessly pounding away.  Finally, Evan asked if they could change
positions.

Evan lay back on the couch, and OxygenJim lowered himself onto his thick
shaft.  This time, as his body bucked up and down on Evan's cock, he could
watch the sensations wash over his face.

Evan took OJ's own flagging dick into his hands.  There were traces of
sticky cum still on the tip.  He smeared it over the surface of his
cockhead using his thumb.  OJ was recovering from the last time he'd shot
and the feeling of a warm, solid cock in his ass was starting to get to be
really good again.  The redhead's pecker stirred from the stimulation
outside and in.

Evan had his head back and his eyes closed.  His legs were propped up on
the side of their couch.  He was slowly bouncing off the cushions now.
OJ was still doing most of the work, but Evan was helping to drive his
hardness up and into OJ's hot hole.

Jim's cock was standing at attention now, pointing straight back at Evan's
face, and colored an angry red.  He was fully recovered from shooting his
load before, and every pass of Evan's thick head over his prostate
energized him.  His thrusts, dropping him onto Evan's invader came faster
with each moment.  Evan was stroking him, but he resolved not to cum until
Evan did.  He clamped his ass muscles down on Evan.

Evan's legs stiffened straight out and up and OJ felt the orgasm build
beneath him as his balls contracted under his ass.  Evan gasped, his
rhythm faltered and suddenly his ramrod-straight cock jammed itself inside
his partner.

OJ felt Evan's cock recoil in his ass with every forceful burst of cum
that shot forth.  Still, OJ bucked up and down, fucking himself on that
cannon, and seconds later, the overwhelming urge took him too, and white
cream touched down on Evan's sculpted chest and stomach.

The two friends stayed there a moment or two, locked in that position
temporarily by anatomy and found their breath again.  Evan looked over and
saw that his hand was resting on OJ's hip.  He stroked OJ's pure skin and
smiled at him.  OJ grinned back and he got up on his knees to let Evan out.

Evan unstraightened his legs and let them fall on either side of the
couch.  Cum started its zigzagging path down his body.  "It's always so
good with you.  I'm amazed that it seems to get better each time."

"Practice makes perfect.  So how long do we have to practice?"

"Until tomorrow night.  I meet with Raven and the buyer at the Black
Hole."

OJ frowned.  "Why there?  That doesn't strike me as being the safest
place."

Evan shrugged and ran his thumb across his friend's hip some more.  "It is
for him.  From what Raven tells me, the buyer is enough into that place
that if something bad goes down, he'll be protected."

"Will you be, though?"

"Don't worry about me...."

OJ pushed Evan's hand from his hip.  "How can I not be worried?  If it
weren't for you, I wouldn't be in this mess.  I'd be able to go home and
get a change of my own clothes instead of some castoffs you found void-
knows-where.  I'd be able to go back to work.  And if something happens to
you, I'm stuck here, forever!  I have no place to go, I can't get in touch
with any of my friends, and what about them?  If I was close enough to
you to get pulled in, they could get the list from my qputer and hunt
them down!  They could be dead, Evan!"

Evan shushed OJ and held him.  "I know you want reassurance right now,
man, but there just isn't any.  If they kill me, they might leave it there,
but that's real unlikely since I won't have the package with me then.
They'll want to know where it is.

"By now, they know it's just you and me that left.  Everyone else should
be safe.  We just have to believe that, because we'll never know any
different.  But yes, if they get me, they'll try to find you next.  You
know they won't get any bits out of me.  I'm a former corp thug,
remember?  They can't force your location out of me.  Just do like I told
you.  Give Quinn the bitbox with the Jasper 220 file in it.  He should
help you out in exchange.  Don't bargain for it.  Just do what it takes to
get yourself off this rock.  You got it?"

Evan had gone over his escape plan with him before.  "I got it."  But he
needed to know his friend would be safe tomorrow night.

				   * * *

It was now late at night where _Daybreaker_ was docked, some thirty hours
after the meeting at the greasy spoon.  Scott was desperately trying to
process the data he was collecting as fast as he could decompress it.  He
sat at a table in _Daybreaker_'s galley that could be folded out when the
ship was docked and all the rest of the furniture appeared to be bolted to
the wall.  He was getting a headache.

Minder chimed to interrupt.  "Yes," Scott asked, his eyes fixed on nothing.

>The report on the tracking device found in your salad is complete.

Scott finished the block he was slogging through, his hand pointing in
Minder's direction as though to keep its attention but have it wait until
he was ready.

The data hacker's vision refocussed.  "What have you found out?" he asked
the floating sphere.

The agent quickly outlined the bug's manufacturer, model, and
capabilities.  In the middle of the speech, the sound of someone climbing
the passenger stairs registered in Scott's mind.  Meicross, the pilot,
appeared in the main hatchway and listened.

The device, said Minder, was a simple homing device which activated upon
ingestion.  It had no audio pick-up;  it merely reported its location to
the receiver.  This unit was never activated because Scott never ate it.

When Minder was finished, Meicross said, "Can't I leave you alone for a
day without you gettin' in trouble, boss?"

Scott smiled.  "Have you found a suitable detection program for these
things?"

>I have.

"I'll use whatever you recommend, Minder.  I haven't got the time to go
over them now.  Thank you."

Minder reset itself to its station.   Meicross asked, "Have we got a job
already, boss?"

Scott briefly sketched out his file's peculiarities for Meicross.

"Wow, boss.  A file that you can't copy no matter what you do.  I bet the
entertainment industry would love to lay their hands on that.  They been
having copyright problems for years."

"Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, really.  And before, but
to a much lesser degree," Scott agreed.

"And you're goin'a solve the problem in, how long?"

Scott smirked.  "Twelve hours."

"Well, I hope you're gettin' a ton of money for it, boss, 'cause you look
like shit, like you always do when you're that close to blowin' a circuit."

"Okay, Meicross, I see where you're going:  I've taken on a Herculean task
again, but this is the find of the millennium!  Of several millennia!
What am I supposed to do, just sit on my hands and let it slip away?"

"Why's it gotta slip away?"

Scott told him the rest of the story, about Evan and their meeting that
afternoon.

"That the same meeting where you picked up that pinger?"

"The same," Scott confirmed.

"So whatcha gotta do here is obvious:  use your twelve-odd hours figuring
Evan out, not the file.  Find a way to get him to give you both files, and
find out why he's buggin' your salad."

Scott said, "You think it was definitely him?"

"Who else knows or cares that you're here?"

"True, but as far as I know, Evan hasn't been trying very hard to find
us.  He didn't ask me where we're docked, for example, and if he wanted to
know without my being aware of it, he knows we're from off-planet and he
know's the ship's name.  Our docking station is in the public registry.
He could just look it up.  Why go to all the trouble?"

"Good point," Meicross said.

"Maybe someone is bugging him, and they either got me by mistake or they
decided to check me out just because they could."

"Do you think it has something to do with the file?"

Scott scratched his chin.  "Maybe.  I don't know enough about this Evan to
know one way or the other.  In either case, if I'd eaten that salad here,
whoever is on the other end of the receiver would have had just enough
information to find me before my implants killed the bug.  No matter how
or why it happened, I'm involved."

Meicross recognized that everybody-better-watch-out tone.  "What are you
going to do?"

"The first step is to find Evan."

				   * * *

Evan's e-mail agent chimed.  It chimed again a moment later, then took
this audio message from Scott_Quinn.

"Hello, Evan.

"I am afraid that I am unable to uncover the inner workings of my file in
such a brief span of time.  I realize that I agreed to hand over the file
to you, but I submit that I can still be of service to you if you want to
know their secrets.  If I can't crack them, I have the contacts and the
resources to interface you with people who can.

"There is one other matter that I should tell you about:  I found a
microscopic homing device in the food I took home from our first meeting.
Whether you were responsible or not, we should talk.

"Scott_Quinn out."

OxygenJim was asleep when the a-mail arrived, and Evan wasn't there to
receive it.