Free Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds by Weston Ochse Page A

that make me a drug dealer? Yes."   He held out a hand. "But let me explain, okay?"
    Rebecca nodded slowly. She wondered if she really needed to know. It wasn't as if she and Andy were going to become an item. Or were they? She'd known plenty of men in her life who'd done drugs. College was filled with them, programmers among the worst abusers. She'd even known a few who'd hooked-up their friends and had, arguably, become drug dealers themselves, depending on your point of view. But to think that Andy dealt drugs...why did that bother her so much? A week ago she wasn't even thinking of him. A day ago they'd just met again after twenty years. Rebecca reminded herself that Andy was the first man she'd talked to at any length since her incarceration. Maybe what she was feeling was familiarity.   
    " Live fast, die young boarders don't grow on trees. Neither do they advertise on the vids," Andy explained. "Those who want the life aren't the types who hang out in the places regular folk go. There are places where they hang, bad places, places where you never want to go alone. Many of them are already hooked, running from one law enforcement agency of another, unable to return wherever they came from. Remember those men in the hooded robes we saw in the alley on the way to Panchets? They're the worst kind of pusher. They're chip heads who push free augmentations to any boarder, hacker or inVi-designer who'll have them. On the surface it seems like a good idea, but they cause more problems than they solve. Sure you can think more clearly and process more efficiently if your brain is coupled with micro-processors, but with each loss of humanity, there's a longing that can only be quenched by very special drugs. Drugs that they sell for the price of a soul."   He lowered his voice and watched the door separating them from the pair of boarders sleeping in the next room. "We don't go that far. We won't. We only provide the drugs these kids need to operate, to survive. I know it sounds bad, but we need them more than they need us. Most are already junkies when they arrive, cashed out, bombed out, needing to feel the rush of a new fix.
    "And we provide it for them. In exchange they do our bidding, the drugs fueling their systems to perform normally impossible feats of dexterity. I'm not proud of the drugs, but I am proud of the network we've created, and without the security of such a network, let me just say we wouldn't have been able to move to the next step."
    "The end justifies the means."   She'd heard that one enough times.
    Andy nodded. "In this case it does."
    "What is this end? You said 'next step.'   Next step in what?"
    He smiled like a kid caught with a cookie. "I can't tell you yet, Bec. I want to, but now's not the right time."   Seeing her expression, he hurriedly added, "Trust me. You're going to like it. More—you're going to be amazed by it."
    Too much subterfuge. Rebecca watched him as he sat and smiled at her. She should know better by now. So far, every time she'd gotten an answer for a question, it had created two more. She shook her head. She hated it when people said 'trust me.'   Her father had said that if a person had to remind you to trust...they weren't trustworthy to begin with. But what was she to do? She had her grandmother to save and she needed a place to stay. Looking around the house, Rebecca doubted this place would be available for much longer. And she liked him. Against her judgment she liked Andy.
    She decided to let it ride. As a virtual Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, there were a lot of things she didn't understand. For all she knew drugs were legal now. So much had changed. She didn't know what was lawful and what wasn't. She was convinced she'd be surprised at some of the things now against the law. Spitting could be a misdemeanor. Jaywalking could be a felony.
    Then there was that matter of coincidence. Meeting Andy so soon after her brother's death, arriving at the