Normal, Non-Tropi


   In a world where cyborg enhancements were a fashion statement,
where piercing tongues and navels had given way to replacing
limbs with glittering chromium silver....  Where brainchip
implants were as common as dentures....

   There was a small group of people who feared they were no
longer quite  human.

   After all, at what point does a man become a machine?  Add
brainchip cranial enhancement.  Substitute a chromium alloy arm
for a flesh one.  You still have a human.  There is no rust upon
the soul, and the spirit flows through metal as well as flesh -
despite the purists' claims to the contrary.  And there are worse
things than becoming a machine.

   These people were not the ones with prosthetic boosters.  They
had no telescopic eyeballs, no didetic memory, no RAM-boosted
intellect.  They did not need augmentation.  They called
themselves the 'People of the Process', the Tropi.

   For the Tropi, external augmentation was not possible.  Their
bodies rebuilt themselves when injured, rejecting metal and
plastic.  You could not discern the difference between their
muscles and that of any other unequipped person.

   But they had made a bargain that preserved the unity of their
body and spirit far beyond that of a 'normal' human.  They could
not die - even if they wanted.  For a thousand years. Give or
take.

   The possibility of absolute unity of mind and body.  Access to
all the potentials attainable in the human condition.  They had
this, and more.  And, with perfection given to imperfect people,
they began to wonder what they had lost in return.

   It was simple enough to become one of them, a Tropi.  Just be
in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and meet the wrong person.
Oh, yes.  You had to be already dying.  Because if you were not,
you would be.

   This is a story of someone who was one of them, and of someone
who was not.  The first person was an anomaly - a defective, if
that is possible - an immature being frozen in development, one
who could not claim all the talents and abilities of the
full-fledged Tropi.  The second person had only her wit and human
abilities with which to survive.  She was considered a "normal",
a "non-tropi."  For her, this was enough.



--------------------------------------------------------------

'Normal, Non-Tropi' is an original concept story with possible
lead-ins to Takahashi's Mermaid series and either Bubble Gum
Crisis or Ghost in the Shell.  Consider what would happen if,
instead of augmenting the human body, you simply 'programmed' it?
That is what happened to the people called the TROPI.


>>>>>>>Teaser:  From 'Normal, Non-Tropi'


Pud:

   I shifted the pink mass from one cheek to the other, and
nodded pleasantly to the grim faced man who was my opposite,
chewing slowly and juicily, taking immense enjoyment from each
masticulation.

   The man facing me held his face stiff and severe, with only
the flicker of his eyes to betray his unease.  Bet he usually got
tougher assignments.

   I still had my baby fat, although at fourteen I was starting
to tall up a little.  My jeans, cuffs once dragging the ground,
were now high-water; and the tee-shirt was looser at the waist
than at the shoulder.  Nothing to indicate that I was dangerous.
Then why was he watching me so closely?

   Maybe it was the company I was keeping.

   Over on the far side of the negotiating table was the Speaker,
a tall slender grayhaired gentleman engaged in earnest sparring
with the Earth's representative over the purchase of essential
supplies for the colony's near future.

   Nearer was the ship's Captain, short, plump and balding, a
walrus sunning in his chair beneath the brilliant white lights.
He had spoken earlier to a bank of space propulsion experts, and
seemed to have become weary of their incessant demands for
technical specifics.

   No one expected me to say anything.  I was the assistant, the
gofer.  Supercargo.  I blew a bubble, watched it swell until it
was almost transparent and it popped softly.  The Captain looked
at me worriedly, and I grinned back.

   Maybe it was the surroundings.

   Hawaii.  Several years after the killer storm that had almost
wiped the islands bare, and the quakes which had flattened any
remaining structures.  They said we had something to do with
that.

   They rebuilt pretty fast, and pretty well, if this building
was any indication.  We were in an underground extension to the
bottom floor, and there was more digging going on beneath us.

   The room we were in was built for large parties, with a long
mahogany table surrounded by alcoves holding smaller tables, all
of which had a clear view of activity at the center table.

   On the doorways were freshly painted symbols I recognized as
Pennesylvania Dutch hex pictures.  From that my eyes were led to
similar glyphs drawn into the woodwork on each chair.  Stuff to
ward off witches.  The chandeliers were festooned with modern
witchcraft - motion detectors tricked up to act as encephelograph
sensors.

   When I coughed and glanced upward, the Speaker just nodded to
himself... he had already seen them.  They would have been no
problem to counter, or even defeat, but we wanted to do nothing
untoward until we were forced into it.

   The Speaker abruptly stood, and returned to his chair. Things
were not going well.  Time to file a report.

   Chewing hugely, I let just a dribble of saliva slip out of my
left cheek, hastily wiping it up.  This covered my loss of
concentration as I shifted screens up, set my brain wave
transmissions into jittery beta patterns, and established a link
with the ship, The Blue Ox, floating in Honolulu Bay.  I didn't
say anything, just let the sympathetic mage absorb whatever I had
heard since the last report.  There was a vood tap to the top of
my head when she was satisfied.

   The representative for the Conglomerated Federation of Nations
entered the room.  I could sense the mass of the doors as they
swung slowly closed... and locked.  The representative seemed
burdened by his own problems, but he smiled thinly.

   "We will need to ask you some more questions," he started.

   "Questions?"  the Speaker spoke softly, "I was not aware that
this was to be an interrogation."

   "There seems to be some discrepancy between what you tell us
and the real facts.  For instance:  You claim to have visited the
stars."

   "And?" the Speaker's smile was no less thin.

   "Oh, come off it!  Do you expect us to believe that? You've
been gone less than three years and you've gone to another star
system?  Then you come prancing in here and expect to be treated
like conquering heroes!"

   I was expecting the vood double tap on my shoulder, a way of
saying, 'Get ready for it... something's gonna happen.' There was
no need to inform my two companions... they knew the fat was in
the fire, and things were going to get warmer.

   Still, as they had told me earlier, we had to try.  We had
observed the letter and the form of convention by giving them a
chance to be nice.  Now it was a matter of getting out without
hurting any of them.  The person assigned to watch me shifted his
feet slightly, and I amended my thought.  Without hurting too
many of them.  Some would not be easy to walk away from.

   I guessed my counterpart to be an enforcement agent, brainchip
enhanced.  He might be other stuff, too, but this was an educated
guess.  Not the best sort of guard to have.

   There was a huge golden circle on one wall of the room, cut
across by several rings.  Beneath this mural was a small buffet
and a coffee table, attended by several more of the enforcement
agents dressed as waiters.  These worthies were moving to
surround us, a maneuver as blatantly subtle as the calvery
whooping across the plain after the indians.  As the indians, we
would be in trouble if we let them finish their charge and
surround us.  So we waited.

   "As commander in charge of the World Police Force,"  the
representative began, "I hereby charge you with willfully..." He
never finished.  One of the waiters stepped forward and grabbed
the Captain's arm, perhaps figuring that as the oldest and least
able of the group, he would be the easiest to subdue.

   About this time the mage aboard the ship decided that the
activity they were observing outside the room was enough to merit
action.  I felt a stinging vood blow to my rump.

   "You took your sweet time," I griped, and to my companions I
cried, "Lets go!"

   The guard assigned to me seemed momentarily confused by my
actions; perhaps he had expected the command to come from one of
the others.  Nevertheless, he moved to intercept me, stepping
between me and the Captain.  Watching him, I caught a good view
of the waiter tumbling past as the Captain backhanded him across
the room.

   I shifted my gum again, giving my opponent a good view of its
pink juiciness as I waggled it at him.  Didn't distract him a
bit.  He just inclined toward me.  He wasn't trying anything yet,
waiting for me to make a move.

   Suddenly, the air seemed to darken, shot through with red and
white painful streaks.  Oh, great, I thought, they had brainwave
scramblers, electronic shriekers to muddle the thoughts of anyone
sensitive enough to use psychic abilities.  It brought an idiot
grin to my face, which I wiped away with reluctance. They thought
we had psychic powers.  They thought we were witches.  Little did
they know how much worse than that we were.

   But at least the shriekers interfered with the sensors, so I
could sneak a look into the ambient universe.  Calm.  Quiet.
Yeah, we were about to get our clock cleaned by the boogey men of
the world government and the ambient is as pleasant as a Sunday
afternoon stroll.  Go figure.  At least there was no one messing
with arcane stuff here.

   I looked up to see a size 10 brogan floating toward my face,
so I turned and watched it glide past.  The odor of a cheap water
repellant spray came to me.  Stuff sold in airport johns.  Not
only was he a common run-of-the-mill agent, he was a cheap one,
too.

   The guy followed his foot with a flurry of hand jabs, not
being one to let an opportunity to bodily harm get away from him.
I dodged most of them, mananged to absorb the rest without
damaging my self-esteem too badly.

   Then I pushed him away.  This only served to make him angry,
and he came back again without pausing for breath.  Those brain
enhancement chips do that for you, increase your metabolism so
you can go faster, farther on less oxygen. They also increase
your speed and power.  It has been said that if anyone can harm
us, it is one of these guys.

   He pulled a weapon, something sharp and shiny, and I took it
from him without bothering to identify it.  Perhaps I should have
let him keep it.  He would have entertained himself for quite a
while without bothering me.  Depriving him of his toy seemed to
infuriate him, and he came at me again.  I had to dodge behind a
table to get him to ease up, and then he came over the table at
me.  This fellow was very persistent.

   I heard the Captain clear his throat, both over the ambient
and in the clear.  Chancing a glance in his direction, I saw that
he and the Speaker had already taken care of their own problems,
and they were waiting for me.  As if I could solve my problems by
snapping my fingers.  This guy was like a walking buzzsaw.

   Still, I did not want to be embarrassed by having to be saved
from my own lack of skill, so I determined to put my guy down.
My leg sweep brushed his calf but he danced over it.  A flurry of
jabs only tore the cloth of his jacket. I was getting pissed, and
I was getting tired.  Finally, I stopped and went up on one leg,
the other cocked, while holding my arms over my head and drooping
outward.  He got curious, or he got careless.  I kicked the crud
out of him, Karate Kid style.

   "Always wanted to do that," I said, taking another toy away
from him so I could turn my back on him without dying for it.  I
threw my gum to the Captain.

   The doors were armor plated, berylium steel, so we went out
through the wall, near the golden circle.  The Captain took my
gum, rolled it in his hand for a second, and slapped it against
the wall.  We opened our lungs and yelled as loudly as we could
to equalize the pressure of the blast, and then we went out
through the hole that appeared when the gum blew a really big
bubble in the wall.

   We fled through echoing corridors that led to the surface,
reached a thoroughfare that had been blocked off to all surface
traffic, and raced on foot through abandoned residential
neighborhoods toward the bay.  The squall of smallbore handheld
gatlings close behind did nothing to slow us down.

   [You were supposed to steal a jeep or something and run off a
dock,] suggested the mage helpfully.

   "They've cleared the neighborhood!" I panted, "Do you mind?"

   [We have a lifter waiting for you, next block.]

   We were scooped up by the ungainly box, tumbling into it with
projectiles clanging and pattering off the skin just outside.

   Someone was maintaining a running commentary.

   [They are using nukes,] added the mage.

   After all that had gone before, now I got scared.  Not for us.
For them.  Nuclear missiles?  What the hell were they thinking?

   Then we lifted, pulling max gees heading for the Blue Ox
already floating in the sky above.  No sooner had we slammed into
the chute than I heard the countdown over loudspeakers, "Two
missiles, and they're hot!!.. Eight... Seven...Let's get outta
here, people! Four...Three...T..."

   Then all sound was lost as I felt the Group converge into
being.  With eerily slow fingers it grabbed the fabric of space
and wrenched the ship out of the local here-and-now.  Time
flickered back to normal and we jumped...fast.

   The afterimage we left was incinerated by two simultaneous
nuclear explosions.


>>>>>>>Normal Teaser:  END