My Friends in the SSF

I've been out of circulation--my friends in the System Security Force, the System Pigs, scooped me up in a raid and I've been pissing in the corner of a Blank Room ever since, getting beaten twice a day by a huge motherfucker they all called "Mongo" and generally fucked with.

Fucking cops. The worst of it is, they didn't even care about charging me with anything. They just used me for punching practice. They knew I was a nobody, they were just enjoying themselves.

I generally don't have anything against the Crushers, the uniformed cops that walked beats. They were just on the bottom of the pyramid like me--maybe a tick higher--and were just making their way. But after these two weeks I'm thinking, how could any man or woman work with those assholes, the officers, the System Pigs? They're pissing on their own race.

Oy vey, and I get back to my little scrap of the world and not only have the Monks doubled since I was scooped, but I lost my pathetic little apartment too. Shared it with six other desperate folks, and they couldn't wait for me to re-emerge. Thought I was dead. My small number of possessions sold, too, and that yen long gone. Shit. At least I can crash with Avery for a few nights, I think. Cates is a grouchy old man, but he's got a good side to him.

Be back when I'm on my feet again.

Breathing Space

Weird, how the streets create strange bedfellows. Yesterday who do you think came to my rescue? The System Pigs. The SSF.

The cops and the Monks are always uneasy with each other. The Monks are legal reps of a legal, registered religion, so the cops can't just do what they like. More importantly, the Monks and The Electric Church have muscle and money, so the cops don't dare mess with them. Someone like me, no one gives a shit about, so the pigs can do what they like. With the Monks, you can see the cops think twice. It's weird and unsettling to watch.

But yesterday I guess the cops had had a bad day, and they went after the Monks that have been worrying me. Just ran them off, yelling about street permits or some such bullshit--the cops make that shit up as they need to, quoting regs that were passed twenty freaking years ago and no one remembers. But hell, today I'm sitting here having some terrible gin and damned if it's almost peaceful. I'm still starving, but for the first time ever I'm glad the SSF is around.

Web site?

Holy crap, the goddamn Electric Church has a web site: the-electric-church.com. It's creepy; I mean, aside from the general creep factor involved with anything connected to TEC, there're all sorts of weird technical glitches, like someone is trying to communicate, or hack into the system, or something.