last time first

The datafield flickered as the candle guttered, and Sanganan marveled momentarily about the synchronicity. The diesel generator rumbled to life somewhere underneath in the ramshackle innards of the bar below. Keep those fingers crossed. Data blipped in and out on the web, as Sanganan, armed with a password, ransacked the ancient mouldering databases of the Lore Company, in some cases causing real apparent damage, often not being able to go back to files that he had just glimpsed, leaving the only copies on his own personal stack. "In the beginning, there was the Mind...." Sanganan felt feverish, hot and cold running alternately up and down his spine. "Open up! Midland City Police!" So soon? He quickly pulled some files at random and stashed them on his stack, which he quick-flashed into hardsand. Then he pulled out the wand that Dorf had given him. Fed would make him rue burning out the mindterm, not to mention the cops, but he ran the Pulse anyways. The datafield disintegrated. The door pretty much splintered open. "That's a felony on an unlicensed EMP right there," Wrists bound as his stack re-in'ed and jacked. The hardsand splinter lay in plain sight on the floor of Fed's room, but you had to know what you were looking for. "The world you are living in is not the Real World," Sanganan spoke to no one in particular, and then the world seemed to split in half.