Free Shadowrun 01 - Never Deal With A Dragon by Robert N. Charrette

got any food for you."
    The animal's tail thumped the pavement, dismissing the gross oversight. Sam stood and so did the dog. It skipped down the street a few meters, then stopped.
    "Shall I run the streets with you, then?"
    The dog cocked its head.
    "No. Not tonight. Life in the shadows doesn't seem to be for me."
    Sam turned in the direction he guessed would take him back to friendlier parts of Seattle. The glow in the night sky promised that he had made the right choice, He had taken only a dozen steps when the dog trotted to his side.
    "Coming with me?"
    The dog yipped.
    "Well, friend," Sam said, as the dog began to pace him.
    "Loyalty is no easy virtue. But I suppose that doesn't frighten you. You will be true to your nature, after all."
    Man and dog walked on in silence. Behind them, drops of rain began to patter down on an abandoned gun left lying in the shadows.

__________________________
Part 1
    Takes More Than
    a Salary, Man
    __________________________

1
    2051.
    Samuel Verner had never believed the stories about the Ghost in the Machine.
    However bizarre the tale, there was always a reasonable explanation. Some stories were pure fantasy while others were hoaxes by wiz-kid deckers or outright lies by incompetents seeking to hide their mistakes. There was no evidence for a disembodied sentience in the Matrix.
    Now, under the electronic skies of the Renraku arcology's Matrix, he began to wonder.
    A persona icon had entered the datastore where Sam's own projection was at work. The core of the icon was the standard Renraku corporate decker, the chromed image of a proper salaryman. The Raku logo pulsed in blue neon on the left breast, shoulders, and back of the figure's suitcoat. The chrome reflected the swirling numbers and letters that were the datastore's visual representation. Harsh red lines striped the icon’s surface like angry wounds, rude shadows of the luminous outline that surrounded the humanoid shape.
    That wireframe simulacrum was a caricature of a kabuki clown. Any patron of that bawdy Japanese theater form would recognize this figure of pathos who inspired laughter among those spared the larger-than-life trials of the clownish victim. Sam was familiar with the image in the kabuki , and he was also familiar with it here in the Matrix. The hollow clown and its corporate core was the adopted persona icon of Jiro Tanaka.
    But Jiro had been dead for at least three hours.
    Just before beginning his work for the day, Sam had made an unauthorized access into the arcology's hospital data bank. Jiro's file was closed but not yet sealed. Within the file, the patient log recorded the cessation of Jiro's brain activity at 06:03 PST. Sam was saddened but not surprised; the young corporate decker had been sinking steadily for five days since his accidental fall from the promenade in the open mall. The two-story drop to the concrete had shattered bones and ruptured organs. The doctor's prognosis had been pessimistic, citing possible brain damage and an apparent lack of will to survive.
    Yet now, Jiro's persona icon was active in the Matrix, threading its way through the mazes of data. It moved slowly, hesitantly, like a newly freed spirit adjusting to a novel form and abilities. Ghosts made little enough sense in the real world; they had no business in the analog world of the Matrix. This consensual hallucination used by computer operators to manipulate the immense dataflows at incredible computer speeds was not a real "world." It had no way to trap and hold souls.
    Some of the rogue deckers infesting the datanets claimed that a decker's soul could be left trapped in the Matrix when some killer-countermeasures fried his brain. Sam had seen enough scientific documentation to know that such rumors were fantasies. The persona icon was only a placeholder, a marker that indicated where an operator's attention was focused in a computer system. It had no existence, even though another operator in the same part of the system