Roger Rabbit Meets Net.Cop

Deep down in a hole.

Bits of bear hide lay about the entrance, and empty hunny jars covered the floor.

Off in a bedtunnel, a Biafran-refugee-posterchild clone of a scraggly, snaggle-toothed rabbit hunched over a Lear Siegler ADM3A toilet seat terminal - the blue one, with the wayrad ASCII lower case ROM set. One unkempt ear managed to nearly stand up, but the other drooped, donkey taillike, beside his mouth; the lice, happy for the inconvenience, leapt to their death on his outstuck tongue.

Scratching his mangy, scab-encrusted, smog-gray hide in spots even the fleas didn't want just above the few wisps of hair that remained of his tail, Randall whimpered quietly to himself. Now that the hunny was gone, along with his job as systems administrator at Nitwits, Inc., he would not only lose his hutch, but would likely starve as well.

Desperate to shut out the sight around him, the poverty-ridden, darkened tunnels full of refuse, with nasty, slimy things slithering across the walls reminding him of his therapist's description of his psyche - poverty-ridden, darkened tunnels full of refuse, with nasty, slimy things slithering across the walls, he started another witty reply to another net.article.

Hours later, the seventeen carefully crafted words of his response cleverly hidden between quotes from the original article and his signature, he scanned the text one last time, his one functional paw hovering excitedly over the key that would send the brilliant reparte out to the waiting world, costing the net thousands of dollars if he was lucky. Scum oozed from his cracked digit onto the keyboard.

Instead, he squeaked in his most desperate voice, "who... who... who is it?"

"Are you a rabbit or an owl?", a dangerous voice behind him growled.

Slowly he turned. His last whisker quivered in pure, abject terror. Before him stood a study in black, the darkness sucking in the light from his CRT, the pure black outline of the massive figure before him broken only by a white hot spot with some letters his carotene-deficient eyes could no longer make out, and a horribly bright cattle prod, in some indeterminate dayglo color, which was aimed right between his legs.

The hilarity of the scenario overcame his temptation to faint.

"It don't work no more. I'm a rabbit, but it don't work."

The net.cop raised the cattle prod to the sole functional appendage, still hovering listlessly above the keyboard, noted, "Neither does this", and pressed the stud.

The sparks hit like lightning in a California summer. The rabbit was instantly consumed in flames roughly the color of sodium-mercury arc lamp light. Soon, the room filled with vile, greasy smoke, there was no more than a small pile of fine, ocher soot on the chair to mark where the pathetic creature had lived his final weeks.

Greg's face showed no emotion - there was none in this case. Neither mercy killing nor justice nor assault for entertainment's sake; it had simply been needful.

Deftly, he kicked a spot on the roof and disappeared with a soft "plop". The cavern cum cairn fell quietly and slowly in on itself; above, the forest barely even noticed.

A faint glimmer of bunny outline near the doorway vanished - the wind bore it away as wisps of fog; the feeble mind that had given shape to Mortimer gone, Mortimer followed suit.

"*That* for Nadja's postings!", he laughed quietly. As Tr*sh slowly turned its huge bulk towards this attack from an unexpected quarter, Greg hopped lightly over its shoulder and powered down its system in mid-edit. As the massive mound of pseudo- human flesh boiled angrily but deathly slow back around, he whipped out a booster charge, plugged it into the prod, and proceeded to carve "I Love Thom" into the gangrenous leather of Tr*sh's forehead, backwards. Skipping gaily over the tumultous, tumorous fields of unkempt hair, he popped out as he had come in. The effect of this was not fully realized until days later, when the Tr*sh happened to look in a mirror, after which the net.vitriol level caused the EPA to shut down usenet for a week.

Last updated: 30 Mar 1994

Copyright 1989-1994 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.

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