From: jhm@sni.ca (John H. McMullen)
Subject: STORY: Into The Dungeon [Champions] 2/2
Summary: They come out of the dungeon, but not without losses
Date: 4 Sep 91 14:28:44 GMT


_Level Seven: The Think Tanks_

	We've all seen ghosts now, but we know what they are: they're
memories brought to life. (I saw my grandfather.) James says there's a
tremendous telepathic mind somewhere on this level. The zapflies love
it.  Further, Brian says these aren't headaches, they're "ego attacks".
It seems a fine distinction to me. He says it feels the same as when
James zapped him once (experimentally, before James knew exactly what
his powers were). Foz says it's all about turning the brain into
process cheese spread.

	Rod's unconscious. So's the Sphinx. Murphy, Chu, la Scala,
the Foz, and myself have all collapsed once. The only thing
keeping us going is shots of stimulants and painkillers; we can't
give Rod one because we can't get the needle into him, and
stimulants don't seem to affect the Sphinx like the rest of us. 

	We've found doors that keep out the zapflies, but all of
them were propped open. We shut them behind us. 

	This level has offices, and--this is exceptionally
gross--each office has a transparent tank containing a _human
brain_.  Even more gross, the brains are _still alive_. The
zapflies cluster on the tanks, obscuring what's inside. La Scala
says that these brains have Change; you can see a whitish-silver
web-work that extends all the way through the brain tissue. 

	What we don't know is whether Changelings died to provide
these brains or whether they were cloned. The money here is on
cloning. (Yes, I know _we_ can't clone a human being.  We can't
build rock walls that Kirk can't punch through, or force fields,
or robots. There are Changelings whose superpower is
intelligence.)

	Brian wanted to pull the plug on the tanks, but I can't let
him. No matter what they've become, these things were human. If
there is a human soul, it surely resides in the brain, so these
things have a soul. 

	James is going to try to establish contact with one of the
brains in the tanks. The rest of us are standing around being
bitchy and then apologizing because we know it's this place
that's doing it to us. And Anita says she can carry Rod and Kirk
all day if necessary. 

	Sometimes I wish I drank. To excess. 

	We can't camp here; we might never wake up. We've timed the
stimulant injections, and when we're down to a safety margin of
an hour and a half, we're going to try to portal to the next
level down. It might be better there. If we can't portal down,
we'll go up. Godspeed and Anita figure they can get everyone out
in only a few minutes, even with the turns in the corridors. 

	James has made his attempt at contact. At one point he
collapsed; when we gave him another shot, he said that one mind
had a--he called it an "ego attack damage shield". The other
Changelings seemed to know what he meant; I don't know where they
get this terminology. Sometimes I suspect them of holding classes
and not telling me. (Joke.)

	James says all the minds he can reach are insane. (I presume
he means all the minds that aren't _ours_.) That started the
euthanasia argument! Foz was particularly persuasive in favour--I
sometimes forget that there's a brain behind his arrogant
personality. The argument was finally shelved when Anita pointed
out that she, Murphy, Chu, and la Scala were representatives of
the law, and it would be deemed murder if we turned off the tank
pumps. We left them alone. We're going to have to send someone to
deal with them, later. They aren't going to go away. 

	It took the Glove ten minutes to get any kind of a fix on a
lower level, and he said we were effectively portalling blind. 
Like the rest of us, his concentration was shot. We stepped
through, hoping we would find a place to camp for the night. We
want sleep.


_Level ?: Some Say the World Will End in Fire, Some in Ice_

	 We're all pretty wired on stimulants and we're freezing to
death. Forgive my handwriting, but it's subzero here. Somebody
left the air conditioning too high. As I write this, Rod and the
Sphinx are still unconscious and Godspeed is missing. On the
bright side, there are no zapflies on this level. The connection
between the level above and this one must be sealed tight--or the
zapflies can't stand this temperature. 

	The walls are covered with frost. We found a container
labelled "Liquid Helium", so we figure that some kind of
supercooling apparatus broke down here. It still works. James
pointed out that some of this technology would require
superconductors, which work best at lower temperatures. 

	The frost is too thick to be just moisture condensed from
the air; there must be some other water source nearby. 

	Kirk once told Anita that cold didn't bother him. I hope
that wasn't male macho bullshit, because we've wrapped Rod in all
the sleeping bags. I hope he's all right. I hope Kirk's all
right. 

	I'm glad that a jacket is part of my costume. I'm glad that
my mask covers my face, though the moisture from my breath
freezes in the cloth, making it hard to breathe. The Glove handed
his spare balaclavas to the police. La Scala especially seems
bothered by the cold. 

	The real problem is that we're lost. We've got a map, but we
don't know where on the map we are, and all the landmarks are
under frost or lichen. (There's this delicate crystalline lichen
all over the place here, it shines a sort of green colour. Even
better, it doesn't seem to be lethal. We haven't seen any
spaghetti moss--"shardagris"--yet.) We explored a couple of rooms
before we decided to stop and wrap everyone up in sleeping bags
and extra clothes. Godspeed volunteered to run a search pattern
on this level to see if he could spot any landmarks or the stairs
down. We're waiting for him now. 

	The rooms we were in had the same sort of transparent floor
grid machinery that we saw upstairs. Whatever those machines do,
this level seems to be dedicated to it. 

	I just saw a little mouse-like animal nibbling at the
lichen. I ought to try and catch one for Kirk to study, but I'm
just too _cold._

                                 * * *

	Godspeed still hasn't come back. Anita's going to look for
him. Murphy said to give him more time, but Anita took off,
leaving Murphy swearing at the rest of us. Then he remembered I
was there, and he apologized. Does he think I've never heard
those words before?

                                 * * *

	Anita just came back. She looks _awful_, she's all burned on
her hands and face (La Scala says they're second-degree.) She
says she thinks she knows what happened to Godspeed. 

	We're on Level 9. There's a room on the map that's got
something labelled as "Fireball Cannons". Going at standard on-
slippery-frost speed, Anita got just to the cannon when it fired. 
She only barely managed to stay conscious and drag herself out of
the way. She pulled herself to the right (there are two corridors
of the end of that room, one to the right, one to the left). 
Looking across to the left, she saw large hairy snowmen. Yetis. 
They saw her too. She ran after them when the fireball cannons
stopped, but by then they had disappeared. Now we know where we
are on the map; there's a secret room in the section where the
yetis are. We think they took Godspeed there. 

	We're going to split up. First, everyone is going to go down
to the next level, in the hope that it is warmer than this one. 
Then, Brian and Foz and la Scala are going to come back up and
rescue Godspeed. La Scala's going along because Godspeed may be
badly burned. 

	I want to come along because they'll need someone who can
fly to get past the fireball cannons, but they've got some kind
of weird protectiveness thing going. I don't understand it; Brian
and I are the only two with working force fields, so we're the
best-protected. I get to ferry everyone across the floor of the
fireball cannon room. Whoopee. Totally nutra.   

                                 * * *

	We're camping on the stairway. We got Godspeed back; he
wasn't too badly burnt and mauled by yetis. I guess they hadn't
figured out how to take off his helmet; that was still on. I
guess his clothes protected him.  Mostly. 

	The reason we're camping on the stairway is that the next
level is at least waist-deep in water. We're going to sleep here
for the night. Whoever's on watch should make sure that the
lungefish don't come up the stairs to get us.


September 10, 1989, 6:30 am

_Level Ten: A Sunless Sea_

	I hope we get to the bottom soon; I've got school tomorrow. 
(The curse of being a high-school costumed adventurer.) Oh, well,
it's early in the term: I can probably get away with missing one
day.

	Rod and Kirk are awake. Their unconsciousness passed into
sleep sometime during the night. Both still have tremendous
headaches, not to mention stiff muscles from sleeping on stairs. 
So do the rest of us.... 

	There was a lot of discussion about whether we would go into
the water. The Glove doesn't think he should try to portal people
further down. 

	"First," he whispered, "my powers have become...unreliable."
He seemed embarrassed by this admission, but Brian said, "Mine
too. Something's interfering with teleportation.  Not just down
here."

	"It's even worse since we came down here.  Second, if
there's water below us, opening a gate there might be equivalent
to opening one at the bottom of the sea."

	"Um," said Murphy.  "Pressure.  Like a fire hydrant." The
Glove nodded. 

	"Third," the Glove said, "there are twelve of us.  That's a
lot of people to carry.  Almost a ton of weight."

	So then we tried to figure out if the three fliers could
carry everyone. Godspeed says he can run on water, but there
isn't enough clearance between the surface and the roof for him
to stand up. The Sphinx can fly, but not indoors, not here.  The
Glove says he can usually fly, but his powers are unreliable in
the dungeon. Even though Rod is physically capable of carrying
everyone, our party is just too _bulky_ to carry over the surface
of the water, and Murphy is opposed to splitting us up again. 

	Then we tried to figure a way to build a boat, but the
problem of clearance (and materials) kept getting in the way. 
Eventually we sent Godspeed and Anita up to the surface and
waited for them to come down with two inflatable rafts. That took
two hours, what with decontamination and all. 

	It's a lot simpler to explore caves when you've got
speedsters you can send back for supplies! 

	 James, Rod, and I fly. We rigged up rope harnesses (Chu
turned out to know a lot of odd knots, but he had to tell us how
to tie them, because of his arm); Rod tows one raft and James and
I alternate towing the other. 

	In Rod's raft: the Glove, Murphy, Anita, Foz, and la Scala. 
In the other: Godspeed, Chu, Brian, and the Sphinx. Except for
sharks and lungefish, we don't expect much in the way of monsters
here. 

	(Foz tested the water. He reports that it's not unbearable. 
You wouldn't want to spend long in it, and you'd want a lit
fireplace and some hot cocoa when you got out. If we were
seriously thinking of wading, I'd send out for wet suits--except
for the tactical difficulties of fitting them and maintaining
secret identities and the time delay, and all of that. --Speaking
of wet suits, Godspeed and Anita thoughtfully brought two diving
masks in case we need to do some underwater exploration to find
out what's in the next level. I hope it isn't water.)

	This area has its own eerie beauty. Even Foz and Anita have
stopped bickering. The "shardagris" hangs over the water, casting
long shadows and pale reflections in the water as our lights
catch it. The water seems like ink, but if you shine a light down
into it, it's actually quite clear. Fred's been telling us about
his experiences with underground lakes while spelunking; it
sounds fascinating and exciting (and not a bit like what we're
doing here). 

	We just heard a distant booming splash. Whoever can fly and
isn't towing a raft is supposed to scout around. There's no sense
in being attacked by killer porpoises or something. (I know
dolphins don't attack humans; well, normal dolphins don't. 
Dungeon dolphins might.) I'm writing this while James is pulling
the raft. Rod's spotted something up ahead; I'm going to go look.

                                 * * *

	 There's some kind of seaweed here. It's a freshwater weed
but it's got little bladders on it to keep it afloat. James says
it looks a lot like sargasso seaweed. There's a huge bed of it,
but I don't think it made the noise. 

	Kirk just said, "Seaweed is a habitat for many different
animals. I wonder what lives in it?"

	Anita called back, "I think we're about to find out."

	 It's chasing us. The seaweed is moving, slowly but
unmistakably, and it's chasing us. Do we look like plant food?

                                 * * *

	Glad I kept this journal in a plastic bag. We're thoroughly
soaked and cold and not a little bit mad at Rod. 

	First things first: both rafts are destroyed. Kirk thinks
that the seaweed got its energy from heat sources (it hurt Rod!),
and since we were the warmest thing in the water, it tracked us. 
Fish are cold-blooded; it didn't care about _them_. 

	We didn't see anything like the lungefish; I think they're
shallow water fish. Instead, there were a whole school of these
little fish with razor-sharp spines. They didn't _attack_ the
boat, they just swam around it, and it started to leak.... 

	So the rafts were leaking and there were these razorfish in
the water, and Rod and James started to _pull_, hard, to get the
rafts away from them. That just made it worse and sliced open a
long rent in the bottom of Rod's raft. The rafts were sinking
fast, and I'm ashamed to admit that we weren't thinking too
coherently; nobody wanted to go into the water with those little
fish and God-knew-what else.  (To be fair: James and Rod were
fairly calm, but both of _them_ are armoured.) Brian tried
electrifying the water to kill the fish; that was a mistake
because the people in the rafts were pretty damp by then and they
got some of it. 

	Fortunately (or not), we were very close to the stairwell by
this point, and that's where we headed. It became obvious that a
huge, oh, _beaver dam_ of debris was blocking the stairwell,
coated in this seaweed stuff. 

	Rod's intentions were good; he yanked at a chunk of the
debris at about the same time that the Glove yelled, "Wait! I'll
gate us there!" Rod didn't hear the Glove because that was when
the huge ray fell off the wall to land with a booming splash
which soaked us all. I had seen the huge splayed shadow on the
wall but didn't recognize it, and now I saw rays creeping up all
the walls and I shrieked, Rod ripped out the plug that held in
the water, getting seaweed all over himself. 

	Rod screamed with pain, but he was cut off by the thunder of
the sudden waterfall, and the water sucked down the two rafts,
their contents, and the two Changelings tied to them. 

	Since I wasn't in a raft, I tried to grab one of the others
to save them, but Kirk was spreading his wings in an attempt (he
later told me) to catch them on the edge of the stairwell, so I
couldn't see who I was grabbing. It turned out to be Anita, and
when the raft started to go down the stairwell, I couldn't lift
Anita free or break her grip on me. We all went down. I hit my
head just about then and fell unconscious, so I don't know much
more about it. 

	Rod stayed conscious; so did James and Anita. Rod and James
couldn't lift us out of the waters, but they could _guide_ us
whenever the water slowed, like when the breaking flood came to a
junction in the corridors. By the time I woke up, we were on the
twelfth level, and I had a greenstick fracture of my right arm. 
Fortunately, I'm left-handed. 

	We took stock. Our sleeping gear was gone, our food was
gone. The only things we really had left were my gear, Rod's and
James' (since we three had been wearing our packs when we went
down), and two badly cut-up rubber rafts. The police still had
their knives and guns, though the ammunition was wet. Only Foz
had lost his light, though Brian's and Godspeed's don't work
anymore. 

	On a more personal level, I am the only serious injury. La
Scala set my arm and put it in a sling. According to la Scala,
the Glove snapped both his arms, a finger, and fractured one
wrist. They healed while the Glove slept, but they healed
crookedly, so Rod had to break them all again for la Scala to set
them. The Glove made no noise, but he sat alone for some time
afterwards.  _His_ fractures healed within two hours. 

	Fred's arm is badly swollen and infected, but he won't let
us send him back up to the top. 

	Tending to the wounded took quite a while. While we were
waiting, those of us who weren't screaming in agony (joke) talked
about whether we wanted to give up and return to the surface. 

	"Look," said Foz, "there are only two more levels to go,
according to the maps."

	"And how many levels after that?" said Rod. "How do we know
that the Grandmasters, if they ever existed, didn't just carve
out new levels?"

	"We don't," said Murphy. "We go on. That's what we came here
to do."

	"That's fine for _you_ to say," said Brian. "This is your
job. But James and I have a store to run. Tomorrow morning, one
of us is going to have to go back up and open the store."

	"I didn't force you to come along, Mr. Dorion."

	"I came to find Taboo!"

	Anita said, "Come on, guys, I thought we had your
co-operation."

	Nothing was resolved. We started to walk. (I flew; I found
that walking made my arm bounce, which hurt.) This level seems to
have been almost entirely service and maintenance rooms. The
flood made it impossible to know if they were abandoned or not. 
We don't really care any more.


_Level Thirteen: The Dungeon's Cradle_

	Monsters? Oh, we found lots of monsters: nicklice, pin rats,
chunkmunks (which fed on explosive slaycorns), and the Bard
lizards (singing lizards that almost put us into a trance--they
were disoriented and confused by the rush of water that had come
buy; if there had been more than four gathered in any one place,
we might have succumbed.) We were too tired and too sore to be
scared. If they weren't humanoid, we blasted them. 

	Brian's castling ability (when it worked) was very useful
with the larger ones: he'd swap places with a monster, putting it
right in front of Rod, or Kirk, or Anita--the bricks. 

	We found equipment, almost all of it disabled. Kirk
identified it as biological decontamination equipment--the kind
you'd use if you were experimenting with recombinant DNA.  The
kind we have up top, waiting for us. 

	 There was light and power down here; the constant hum of
air conditioning and the whir of computers. Then we found the
cloning vats. 

	Not really vats--eight huge structures, each of which
contained six cylinders full of some kind of amniotic broth. Most
of the cylinders had things growing in them. Seven of the vats
had narrow cylinders; the cylinders of the eighth could easily
hold a full-grown man. 

	None of them held humanoid beings; I don't think I could
have stood it if they had. 

	There were some sophisticated robots which apparently
"decanted" (to borrow Aldous Huxley's terminology) the organisms. 
There was also a computer which "programmed" them with (I guess)
instincts. 

	The computers didn't work for long; the first zapfly had
found the room. Before we could copy the software from the
computers, it was destroyed. 

	As soon as he saw the zapflies, James swore. "Let's push on,
guys. I want my force field when we face whatever's on the next
level."

	In the rooms beyond the cloning vats, we found more
monsters. One kind had once been an Irish wolfhound, but black
and with glowing green eyes. (Kirk said maybe they had a
phosphorescent nictitating membrane or tapetum; no one cared.)
Their claws dripped ichor, and they fought viciously. We couldn't
outrun them. To buy us time, the Glove gated them to the level
above.  We needed the minute before they came back. 

	In the ragged silence, I cocked my head and asked, "Do you
hear someone singing? Someone _calling_ us?"

	No one else did. I didn't push it.

	We destroyed the hellhounds, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. 
One of them broke Rod's skin. La Scala and the Sphinx are both
blind--they got ichor in their eyes. Anita rushed la Scala to a
hospital, and Fred Chu, too, with terrible wounds. Foz's weapon
snapped in two, caught in the jaws of one of the beasts. He was
badly burned by ichor. The Sphinx also had some ichor smeared
over his wings and at the roots of his feathers; his skin was
blistered and red. I was exhausted, stung out, Brian wasn't much
better. James was surrounded by a small horde of zapflies each
time he tried to "ego blast" one of the hellhounds. Murphy is
exhausted and bleeding, though we've bandaged his wounds as best
we can with the dirty rags we have left. 

	And now they've heard him calling us. 

	This room has holes in the floor. According to the map,
there is a dragon below us. We're going down, because someone,
something, is calling to us. Something with a voice that hints of
sweetness and corruption, bubbling lava, and sweet surcease. It
forges us into a unit again; there's no more argument. We're
going down. Jump (and fly), or take the steps? 

	 We'll jump.


_Level Fourteen: The Rough Beast's Hour Come_

	A large open room, with only a few support columns to block
the view. The walls were black with birds--not crows but ravens,
huge ravens, the kings of the raven world. I saw the dragon turn
his head and snap some off the wall, but the ravens stayed,
because of _him_. 

	He was a demon. Seven feet tall, perhaps, and the wings of a
bat. Leathery skin, a loincloth of coarse fur, and horns. His
feet were cloven hooves, and his tail is barbed. There was a gold
hoop earring in his left ear. Three hellhounds crouched at his
feet. His voice, his sweet damnable voice, will echo in my ears
for years to come. He was--_is_--a demon. 

	 Behind him was a tortured soul. A man, all bones and knobs
and skin of porcelain is lashed, upside down, to a cross. Oddly
enough, he was the first one to speak. 

	"You got my message. Good."

	"Quiet, impudent whelp," said the demon and lashed once with
his tail.  Blood began to seep from a lacework of cuts on the
man's belly, and I saw the pale pink-white colour of internal
membranes.  Then the blood slowed and porcelain skin stretched
its way across the wounds again.  The man spoke again, his voice
flat and unconcerned. 

	"I turned off all teleportation powers intermittently, first
in a Morse code message, and then in a pattern corresponding to
the product of two prime numbers, which in turn gave a diagram
showing a horse and a map. I repeated these patterns constantly."

	"Taboo," the Glove said mildly, "there are simpler ways to
send a message.  You might have opened one of my portals to
here."

	Taboo frowned (I think; it's difficult to read expressions
upside down) and finally admitted, "I didn't think of it."

	The demon laughed. 

	"James," said Foz in a low voice, "cheese him." But James
didn't answer. He didn't move, floating tailor-fashion just below
the ceiling, his eyeballs rolled back in his head. 

	"A bargain with the devil," said the demon. "The people
upstairs would do anything for healthy, whole bodies again. They
took your measure upstairs. If they win, they take your bodies."

	Murphy said, "Widow, clear him out of here. Rod, take the
demon."

	I grabbed James and hauled him up through the ceiling;
ravens followed us, watching. There was the heat and crackle of
flame and I smelled the stench of sewer gas. I heard Murphy thank
the Glove. 

	When I peeked again, no one was down. Rod was pressed
against a wall, apparently groggy. The Demon said, "Sentries,
take him." There was a thunder of wings as the ravens attacked
the Glove; the Glove disappeared, taking a number of ravens with
him. "Balthazar," said the demon, "find him." One of the
hellhounds leapt past me, up to the next floor. 

	"Dammit," swore Murphy. "Widow, track it and stop it!" I
tried to follow, but it was fast, too fast for me, and I lost it
on the twelfth level. I had to decide what to do: I didn't know
the path to the top between the twelfth and seventh levels; only
Anita and Godspeed had the maps for that, and my party, my
friends, were being destroyed down below. 

	But I never made it anywhere, because the Demon appeared to
me. 

	He spoke to me. I thought we spoke for hours, and he
promised me things, things I will never reveal that I wanted. He
showed me what life would be like if I agreed with him. (Deep
down was the ache of guilt--my friends needed me--but that was
easily ignored.) He let me taste it, and then held it back,
waiting for the promise. I heard his voice as a smooth caress, a
sexual thrill and a promise. He knew what to offer me, and how to
say it. 

	To my credit, I never said yes.  To my sorrow, I never said
no.

	Anita found me entranced as she returned from delivering
Fred and la Scala to the hospital.  She hadn't seen the Glove, or
the hellhound. She touched my shoulder and in the twilit border
between trance and awareness I refused the things I wanted most.
I was still groggy when Anita deposited me at the bottom level.
The Demon was there, too, so I had faced illusions from the
brains in the tank; that didn't make it easier to look at him
and not _yearn._

	The fight had not gone well for us. James was still
entranced. Murphy was down, badly burned, bleeding from a dozen
puncture wounds--Godspeed was carefully picking him up to ferry
him to the hospital. Foz was burned but still fighting, locked in
a deadly embrace with one of the hounds. His throat was blistered
from the ichor. The Sphinx had been led, at some point to the
Demon, and had a grip on the demon's throat from behind, but was
being buffeted by the Demon's wings. Brian was nowhere in sight. 
Rod was controlling the dragon's flame by the simple method of
blocking the beast's throat with his arm. 

	"Anita! Give me a hand!" cried Foz. Anita knocked the
hellhound off him with a half-dozen blows. Rod suddenly _pulled_
away from the dragon and ripped out its throat. Dark reptilian
blood gushed over him, staining his clothes and frothing as it
hit the floor. 

	I barely noticed as Godspeed and Murphy disappeared. 

	"Now, Demon," Rod said, "you're going to have to deal with
_me_."

	Rod braced himself and delivered a powerful punch. It
knocked the Demon and the Sphinx against the far wall. The Demon
shook off the Sphinx's unconscious body and said, "Though yours
is the strength of a hundred, mine is the strength of Hell, and
mere numbers are no match for Hell."

	Then the Demon disappeared, replaced by Brian. "Clear out,"
Brian shouted. "Glove's putting the Demon in the containment
chamber of the reactor! It may blow!" The third hellhound came
from the hall at the end of the room; Brian hit it with a
tremendous bolt of electricity. I could smell the ozone from
meters away. The hellhound fell back, staggered. 

	Anita grabbed the Sphinx and James and began to run. I
turned to follow, but before me was a ring-picture that showed
the hall of mirrors, way up on the first level. I thought it was
another illusion, but Rod and Brian pushed me through.  "One at a
time," Brian said. "He can't handle any more than that." They
followed after me.


September 11, 1989, 2:00 am

_Above the Dungeon_

	 Safety devices kept the reactor from blowing up, though the
containment chamber was ruined. There was no sign of the Demon. 
He must be dead. 

	I hope he's dead. 

	Ted la Scala's blind, the Sphinx is almost blind in one eye,
Fred Chu lost his right arm. Murphy's okay except for some scars. 
Foz has scars too, where the ichor burns were too deep. Anita's
face and hands don't look too good, but Dr. Tower says they will
heal. James came out of it eventually--we think he won the battle
for control of his body. Brian rescued Taboo. 

	I don't know if we found any answers to the questions we had
when we went in. Godspeed seems concerned about the religious
implications of the Demon--he hopes that the Demon is just a
demented Changeling. The Glove isn't saying anything. Kirk's
pretty excited by the equipment we found--he says it's leagues
beyond anything else we've developed, but it's all conceptually
possible. Foz says he's glad to get out the costumed adventurer
business. Rod was more concerned about his missing roommate than
about what the entire adventure meant.

	The answers I got were dirtier. I had to find a way to hide
my broken arm, or lose my secret identity. I got to look at a
part of my soul that I keep buried, submerged. I found out what
part of me _really_ wants. 

	It doesn't matter what _he_ offered me. It just matters that
I've been offered all of my secret fantasies and I turned them
down. I know I'm stronger now, because I did turn it down. That's
one answer. 

	But every night, before I go to sleep, I play _What if--?_

	And that's an answer too.  


-- 
John McMullen     Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
jhm@snitor.UUCP   2235 Sheppard Ave., Willowdale, Ontario  M2J 5B5
"When you asked me to live in sin with you, I didn't know you meant `sloth'."
                   -- David Oster