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Outside an administration building, assemblers speak out against Seibek and demand
clone rites. The ozone layer of the Earth began tao break up. Sol, a fat mutant with
a left eye that pops out of his head eats real food grown only for him, not the pills
and swill the common people must eat. He is a Type 13. Non transplantable he and
his boss, Seibek cannot have a new youthful body for their minds. Sol can still enjoy
a youthful body after he eats. Operatives Seibek has hired wear large hats attached
to their tunics. One has a gun on the speaker. Giant robot cops come and tell the
assemblers to disband or they will start shooting. They start hitting others in the
crowd and machines come, telling the crowd, "Die quietly, citizens!!" These
are the Blue Meanies, the Peace Pounders who kill. Jennie, one of the hired operatives
(aka Guts), chases the speaker into an alley. She is a Civil Investigator but she
was broke from unpaid services and a string of bad jobs left her even more broke.
The clone pricks who hired her would not pay her if her quarry got away. Joey-Boy,
a clone hits her down and works for the speaker who wears sun shades. Jennie lets
go of herself and the world when her Power comes out...a wise man taught her how
to use the terrible anger deep inside her as a tool, how to harness the adrenaline
surge that amplifies her strength and speed. She fights the two, kicking Joey Boy
into a wall, and head butting the speaker. By "going away" she does things
she knew that as herself she was incapable of. The two men die. A Blue Meanie gets
her. She is put into a police lock up (Civil Peace Keeping Force's HQ) where others
have been for a week or more. In the cell, a man feels his own crotch. Capt. Beesley,
a man with a glass eyeball, springs her out--he has a job for her: stopping the Banshees.
He knows how she feels about the department but he needs her. Jen recalls last time:
she and her partner Blood, an emancipated clone, one of the first and one with the
ability to sniff out the Banshees. Banshees were thought by scientists to have come
from outer space and they could live a while in human bodies, doing damage inside.
The hosts would scream and scream when Blood sniffed them out. Blood loved it. He
loved a lot of things. Blood was crazy. He has an ear ring in his right ear. She
wants Blood to work with her again. In the hospital a man's head blows into a blood
bomb. Blood was unresponsive for a long time, he had lots of drugs put into lots
of veins, he stopped fighting and withdrew for a long time, losing track of time
and night and day. He had only pills for meals. No windows in his cell. They gave
him a K92 Unit for company...a teddy bear which he reprogrammed into an insulting
little fur ball. Blood came back mentally. Security was relaxed, he got out, and
killed all the staff he found in the lounge. They tranquilized him again. The bear
has a patch over its left eye. Blood is in black tights. Blood tells Beesley and
Jen that he can feel the Banshees are back. A tall woman, Grazelda, who bares her
breast tells the capt and Jen that she has already bought Blood--she will have her
brain put into his head. The captain buys him his freedom. Outside, in an aircar,
Blood wears shades (and dungarees) and tells Jen he will pay the captain back. The
bear, Spudd, tells Jen he ain't no robot. He eats, too. Attackers shoot at them from
another air car. Blood asks for weapons and Jen tells him, "In the back with
the stupid bear." Jen sets down on a roof; Blood tells her to take cover as
he shoots the bodies in the aircar coming at them. It crashes. Blood's pants are
ripped in the knee area. The bodies scream like Banshees. Blood smiles. Jen is worried:
the Banshees were never so organized before, "This is crazy." Blood looks
at her, "No, Guts. I'm crazy. This is fun." Night comes slowly and somewhere
a Banshee wails...! REVIEW: Imaginative, pessimistic, overly light in wrong places,
and a dim view of the future...make this very realistic and scary. Yet, both Jen
and Blood are quite fun characters...as long as you are not them or encountering
them in real life! The backdrop for the story is exceedingly good and well thought
out. Blood looks like someone I knew once, which makes it even more scary! |