He sat in front of the terminal where he had been for the last four hours.
His fingers where stiff and cold, his back aching, his eyes sore and turning
red by the second. A quick glance around the room revealed much.

The room was about 140 square feet,      seemed very cramped with the bed in 
the corner, the two booksheleves, the night stand, and of course the desk at
which he now sat. The floor was littered with clothes, dirty plates, print-
outs, and various pieces of wire and electronic equiptment. The clock on
his desk flashed 2:27.

Laying over the desk was a computer monitor, a keyboard, empty glasses with 
about a milliliter of browninsh liquid on the bottom. Coffee? Tea? Soda? Who
knew. These were buried in a pile of papers, pens, pencils, rolls of thin 
black tape, and notepads. Nestled among all the paper was a small cellular
phone turned on its back. The phone was connected up to two pads that where
placed over the earpiece and mouthpiece. The pads each had a small wire that
snaked off the desk and led over to the tower computer case that sat next to
the desk.

He grabbed a small eye-dropper bottle labeled "Visine" off the desk and opened 
it. Holding it up, he deposited two crystaline drops in each eye, and closed
it again. Then grabbing another eye-dropper off the desk he opened it. This
ones contents was a faint sky blue, the label had been scraped off. Eight
faint blue drops landed on his tongue. Then he capped that one also, and put
both of them down.

Relaxing with his head back he blinked repeatedly and swished the substance
around on his tongue. Hmmm... He regaurded the monitor again doutfully. He had
hacked in. The account that he had received from his contact was valid, and
the password he had gotten through idiot hacking.

Idiot hacking was a method of guessing peoples passwords by inputing such 
obvious information as first or last name, or the system's name or default
passwords. He was genuinly surprised that the person who had informed him of
the account name hadn't tried at least the basics.

The monitor read:

@C GTEK

Gamma-Tek Connection established   
Product Development Div. database

login:Mary Rembaldi
Password: XXXXXXXX

Last login: Fri Mar 22 08:31:47 from remm9576,344276
Copywrite (c) 1992, 1993 Gamma-Tek Systems Inc. All rights reserved.

You have no new mail

Terminal Type: VT100

Time: 02:31:24:34
Date: 03/25/95

#
                 -----------------------------------------

The man was tall with a sprout of dark, wiry hair on the top of his head. He
wore a forest green cloak over a lace-up shirt and trousers. The leather boots
he wore creaked in the darkness, thier wooden soles not making a sound as he
took a few small steps. Sheathed on his belt thier was a bronze sword about 
two foot in length. Also there was a small black-leather knapsack. Out of this
he took a few small objects.

A moment later his candle flared to life. He put the flint and steel back into 
the knapsack. He now took out a large cotton sack which had been folded into
the knapsack carefully. 

He had just appeared in a room. The room was small with an oaken door at one
end. The door had a brass pull ring. Along the floor were two items, a book
that was labeled 'Daily Journal' and an old parchment map. Picking these items
carefully up and stashing these in his sack, he momentarily glanced at the map
and saw what it revealed. It was a treasure map of sorts. The proverbial "X"
was a room not all that far from this one. The room which the map lead to was
marked as "NEW.PROD/VR/simusx".

The room he was currently in was very small and cramped with just the one 
door. Reaching out he opened it carefully, and it squeaked on iron hinges.
The walls of the place were massive gray stone blocks that were cut very 
striaght and stacked on top of one another. An old castle is what it most
resembled with all the dust and dank air. 

Reaching over he grabbed a torch off a wall scone and lit it with the small
flame from his candle. The new room beyond the open door was illuminated 
almost entirly by the torch. It was a huge hallway about one hundred or so 
feet in length and about five feet wide. All along the walls were identical 
oaken doors like the one he had come out of. Far at the end of the dank hall 
was a slightly larger door made of iron. 

He reached the iron door and opened it without a problem. The hallway he had
just passed through gave him the unshakable feeling of walking through some
sort of prison. Beyond the iron door lay a new, circular room. The circular
room was dark and massive. Air inside was not as dank and stuffy. On the floor
the layer of dust could have been an inch thick. Closing the door from the
hallway he fully entered this new room and look about.

Searching over in a corner he found an old oil lamp. He lit the oil lamp,
adjusted the flame, and put out the torch. The newly, more brightly
illuminated room revealed a carved wooden stand also covered in dust, and 
about ten or so identical oaken doors. Rushing over to the stand he found a 
large book that appeared to be a registry. He ignored this when he noticed
large silver plaques above each of the doors. The plaques with engraved with
words like 'bin', 'usr1', 'etc', and 'NEW.PROD'. The door marked 'NEW.PROD' 
was the one he wanted. He pulled the brass pull ring mounted at waist level
on the door. 

It opened with a creak to reveal yet another room. This one looking much
like the room he had appeared in. It had four doors in total, and was square.
About eight by eight feet with a door on each wall. He closed the door he had
just come through, and pulled open the door to his destination. A dark, heavy
oaken door with the letters 'VR' burnt in gothic capitals on the front. An
ivory knocker was mounted in gold at eye level. As he reached out to pull on
the door knocker he saw that the knocker was mounted by use of a pin. Thus
him pulling on it would result in him aquiring a new door knocker and a 
possible dose of whatever fiendish trap might be released by the loosening of 
the pin.

Instead he knocked three times in rapid succession, and the door swung open 
on oiled hinges without complaint. Here is where the booty lay. The first
thing he saw when he opened the door was a ten foot high bookshelf stuffed
with think musty tomes and volumes of lore. A tresure chest lie beside the
bookshelf with an iron padlock dangling unlocked from it's open lid.

He walked confidently in, but was almost thrown into shock when he saw what
lie just out of his former field of vision. A man sat scribbling figures
into a book identical to those on the massive shelf. He sat at a large, wooden
table that also had some kind of alchemy experiment going on at the other end.

                    ______________________________________

"Okay, I'm in", he thought, "The account name worked and I need to get a peek
at some of the new software."

He was called 'Xenon'. At least that was his handle. Thats what they called
him over the phone, or through data conversation. Real names were never used
by people in his trade. Data-retrieval, or Data-liberation as he liked to call
it. He would get into corporate databases under some poor unsuspecting
programmers account, and get beta, or early, releases of software. He would
then transmit them to his connections who would, in turn, pay him by way of
more leads to other computers, more codes and chips for free calls, more 
drugs, and card numbers. He was accomplished in his field, and people knew
he could get the job done. If he couldn't very few could.

In reality he was Robert Phillips, age 17. A junior in high school, and living
in a house in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was five foot ten, and slim. 
His short blond hair was almost always uncombed, and his teeth yellow. At
tweleve his parents had bought him a computer because "Every child should
have a computer, these skills will be usful for tomorrows job market". At
least thats what dad had told the family. 

Gamma-Tek was a software company. They had very recently put out some top
selling Virtual reality programs. What was mostly in demand was the new
porno crap. Yuppie kids paid good money for this stuff. They wanted it bad
since they needed to be over 18 to buy some, and mommy and daddy wern't about
to go buy it for thier eight year old. Plus they got a 25% discount on the 
price from us, so if they got someone else to buy it for them they still had 
to pay more. This kind of software came on CD, so copying it was also out of 
the question for the average yuppie puppie.

The sale of CDs had transformed in the last year also. Stores sold CDs for 
literally a dime a dozen, but these were blank. You had to go to the record
store and pay for it to be stamped to get the music. That's were the price
gouges were now. 

The little operation his contacts took advanage of this. They would go in to a 
record store, and pay the flunky behind the desk  about one hundred dollars to
look the other way while they fed the stolen software into the stores CDStamp 
database, and made about five hundred copies of "K9-Lust, Dog day afternoon" 
at 20 cents each to sell to the software junkies for up to 80 dollars. 
Machines to copy CD to CD, or CD to any kind of magnetic media were rare, and 
on the whole illegal to own or operate. Fortunatly they had the software 
stored on magnetic media (thier hard drives) when they first got ahold of it 
by stealing it out of the corporating computer system.

The high margin of profit went to pay for things like new technology computers
and modems, bribes, drugs, various illegal activities, and mostly to pay the
rent of the members highest up on the groups ladder. Only the members of the
group highest up in its heirarchy got paid in cold cash. They were the ones
who handled security, treasury, and keeping electronic bulletin boards up for
its members to call. They never did any work, that was for the lowest members.
Xenon was not low in the pecking order, he was one of thier top providers, so
he had a say in most everything and pretty much got what he wanted when he
wanted.

He had done a lot of things for the group. Like one time when he got into a
bank computer and intercepted an electronic funds transfer between bank of
America and some swiss banking system. Since a large sum would be noticed 
immediatly if taken, he set the funds transfer to skim a .2% off of all
transfers. He also set the computers up to explain the loss of funds as an
international transfer tax. The .2% was put into an acount he made. It got 
noticed in two months, but was not realized to be a set-up until three months 
after that. Then he had to alert the group that his little operation had been
found out, and they had to send a person out to withdraw the money before the
bank figured out where all the cash was going. The guy that was sent out 
barely made it in time, he was rumored to have run off at top speed when a
bank rent-a-cop said, "Excuse me sir, do you think you could come back here 
for a moment. " 

The higher members had chewed him out for almost getting them caught, but they
didn't stay angry with him long after they found out that the man they had
sent out had withdrawn around 15,000 dollars. The actually account had 
held over 200,000 dollars, but one doesn't walk into a bank and withdraw
200,000 dollars in cash, and leave without being severly questioned.

Anyway back to the new software. A few keystrokes revealed what was in the
user directory he was in. It was a daily journal, of this Mary Rembaldi. 
Supposedly she was one of the top programmers on the new project. He also
found a detailed project description. The project she was working on was 
something big, something he might get paid good money for.

It was called "Stimusex". Virtual Reality software that was schelduled to
take up ten CDs when completed. With additional sales of add-on experiences,
people, and scenery. Sale price was estimated to be set at $2,000 for the
original software and $100 for add-on discs. The directory the development
version was in was /NEW.PROD/VR/SIMUSX. 

Leaving the programmer's user directory he went to the root directory. Here
he took a survey of the corporate database, and making sure the screen
capture option was on, he headed for the program directory.

"Should I see if any one else is online?", he thought to himself. "No, it's
almost three o'clock and that's eleven or tweleve in Alaska, where the 
corporate database is. No one would be on this late."

Changing directory into the new products, virtual reality division, he gave
the whole area a scan as to what new products they had going. He found that
a few new programs such as VR windsurfing, and a joint effort with the
pallidium press to make a space-age VR role playing game were on the drawing
board. Ignoring the /EDU directory where all the educational programs were
kept he went into the SIMUSX directory where Stimusex was being programmed.

As he went in he found out that there was someone else on the system, and
according to the message currently on screen they were in the SIMUSX directory
as well. A few quick keystrokes revelaed the account and time of login that
he was currently in the same directory. He knew that the other person had
seen a message when he entered, and was probably staring at it, wondering
what one of the programmers was doing in this directory now...

            ----------------------------------------------

"Do mine eyes decieve me or do I see the fair maiden Rembaldi coming in for
late study?", said the old wizard at the table without looking up.

"Ahh... Just was going over some procedures my head, and think I've found an
error I've been making in casting the spell", said the thief that had just
entered. With any luck the wizard would not see through his magical disguise,
and believe him to be the fair maiden, and not some thief come to steal his
spellbooks.

"Ah! Glad to see you so involved in your study. I know the feeling. I've had 
it many a time.", said the wizard who still hadn't looked up.

"Great!", thought the thief, "I go to all this trouble to get a magical
disguise and the old coot doesn't even look up. I might as well be a troll
with a high voice for all he'd know."

The thief proceded to grab some books off of the shelf and stash them into
his sack, appearing to be getting some books to reference. He then made haste
in getting out of the room and back to the main circular chamber. Once there
he dissappeared into thin air, safely away from the old wizard or any chance
of getting caught doing something illicit.

              ----------------------------------------------

"Holy Shit", Xenon thought to himself as he saw the other user. "I gotta do
something to make it look like I am this Mary Rembaldi. I'll grab a few 
files and split. With any luck he will think I'm just checking some fugures
late night work and such. Hell, maybe I'll get a promotion or overtime!", he
laughed.

Grabbing a few source code files in the directory he went back to the root 
directory and disconnected from the database. Looking up at the backlog of
his activities, he saw where he had checked out who was online. The other
guy on the system was a Thomas Kinsberry, Senior Programmer.

"Gotta tell my group contact now!", he was saying aloud as he dialed up the
electronic bulletin board, or BBS that he could contact his contact over.
When it connected  he went right to the user-to-user transfer, dropped out 
of his communications program momentarily to zip up all the stuff he had just
downloaded off the Gamma-Tek database. The Dialy Journal, program description,
half of a megabyte of source code, and the capture file that had recorded
everything he did while online to the database. This he transfered to his
contacts account with a short message that made mention of lots of money,
a new VR software standard, and an urgent message to read the capture file, 
and program description. Promptly after this he fell asleep for 5 hours.

                -------------------------------------

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: STIMUSEX
                     VR PROJECT

STIMUSEX IS A VIRTUAL REALITY SEX PROGRAM THAT IS ESTIMATED TO TAKE UP TEN
COMPACT DISCS TOTAL SPACE, AND REQUIRE A FULL VR BODY SUIT PLUS ADDITIONAL
HARDWARE. COMPUTER REGLATED INTROVEINIOUS ENDORPHIN, ADRENALIN, AND 
STIMULENT INJECTION SUPPORTED BY SOFTWARE, BUT OPTIONAL. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

PRODUCTION COSTS: 47.4 MILLION DOLLARS TOTAL COST
PROJECTED SALES (1ST SIX MONTHS): 5 MILLION DOLLARS
                (1ST YEAR): 35 MILLION DOLLARS
                (EVERY YEAR AFTER 1ST): 15-75 MILLION DOLLARS

PRODUCTION ENTAILS RESEARCH, PROGRAMMER'S SALARY FOR ROUGHLY 30,000 HOURS OF
PROGRAMMING BY A STAFF OF 100 PROGRAMMERS, ADDITIONAL TIME FOR ANY DEBUGGING
WORK, TESTING FACILITIES, TESTING STAFF OF 150 PERSONS, ADVERTISING, PLUS
INSURANCE AGAINST ANY NEGATIVE OCCURENCES WHILE TESTING.

THE PRINTS WILL GO OUT AT $2,000 FOR THE SET. WE ARE CURRENTLY NEGOTIATING
PLANS TO CREATE A JOINT PROJECT WITH BIO-ELEKTRIK CO. (MANUFACTURES VR SUITS,
GLOVES, VISORS, EXTREMITY HOOK-UPS, COMPUTER CONTROLED IV SETUPS, AND SPECIAL 
VR 64-BIT VR MATH CO-PROCESSORS) TO CREATE A SUPER PACKAGE WHERE ON CAN BUY
EVERYTHING NEEDED TO RUN A VR STUDIO AT HOME FOR $7,500.

SALES IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS WILL BE SLOWEST, BUT ONCE WORD SPREADS IN
ADVERTISMENT AND WORD OF MOUTH. THE NEXT SIX MONTHS SALES ARE ESTIMATED TO
SKYROCKET.

NOT ONLY SINGLE PURCHASES ARE INCLUDED IN THE PRICE PROJECTIONS. AFTER THE
FIRST SIX MONTHS EVERY VR ARCADE IN THE COUNTRY AND OVERSEAS WILL HAVE A 
DEMAND FOR THIS PRODUCT, AND WILL BE ABLE TO CHARGE ANYWHERE FROM $75 TO
$200 PER PERSON FOR ONE 'EXPERIENCE' IN THE PROGRAM. IT IS ESTIMATED THAT WE
WILL BE ABLE TO CHARGE ANYWHERE FROM $5000 TO $20000 FOR A ONE MONTH LICENCE
TO PUBLICLY SELL USE OF THE GAME. AS YEARS PASS WE WILL INEVITABLY GAIN
CLIENTS WHILE SLOWLY LOSING BUSSINESS. WE CAN CHARGE ANYWHERE FROM $15,000 TO
$2,500 PER MONTH. WITH AN ESTIMATED 3,500 ARCADES AROUND THE COUNTRY AND 
OVERSEAS WILLING TO BUY A LICENCE TO USE THE GAME THE FIRST YEAR AND AN 
INCREASINGLY LARGER NUMBER AS YEARS PASS THE PROFIT MARGIN IS LARGE.

VR ARCADE PURCHASES FIRST YEAR:
50 ARCADES PER STATE: 2500 ARCADES
EXTRA 1000 OVERSEAS PURCHASES: 3500

HIGH ESTIMATE($2000): 70 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES
MID ESTIMATE($10000): 35 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES
LOW ESTIMATE($5000): 17.5 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES

VR ARCADE PURCHASES SECOND+ YEARS:
75 ARCADES PER STATE: 3750 ARCADES
2000 OVERSEAS PURCHESES: 5750

HIGH ESTIMATE($15,000): 86.25 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES
MID ESTIMATE($8,000): 46 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES
LOW ESTIMATE($2,500): 14.3 MILLION + INDIVIDUAL PURCHASES

ADDITIONAL DISCS CONTAINING NEW SCENARIOS, PEOPLE, AND SUCH HAS BEEN PLANNED
TO BE RELEASED FROM 4-6 AFTER STIMUSEX HAS BEEN RELEASED, THUS GENERATING
MORE PROFIT. THE ADDITION DISCS ARE PROJECTED TO SELL AT $100, AND ARE
ESTIMATED TO SELL 50,000 COPIES ONE YEAR AFTER THESE DISCS ARE RELEASED.

PLANS TO LICENCE USE OF NEW DISCS TO ARCADES, AND PRICE RANGES ARE STILL 
BEING DEBATED. THUS THEY ARE UNAVAILABLE IN THIS REPORT.

*ALL FIGURES COME FROM THE MARKETING DEPT. (SALES DESK)

STIMUSEX WILL NOT ONLY MAKE UP FOR ITS HUGE COSTS IN A FEW YEARS , BUT COULD
BECOME A MEDIA STANDARD IN TELEDILDONICS. THE FIRST PROGRAM OF THIS KIND THAT
IS THIS LARGE.THE PROGRAM CONFIGURATION IS AS FOLLOWS.

1ST DISC: BASIC INTERFACE, I/O PROGRAM MUST BE INSTALLED ON FIXED DISK (15MB)
2ND-4TH DISCS: SKIN RESPONCES, TEXTURE AND BODY HEAT DATA
5TH DISC: ANAL/ORAL SEXUAL CONTACT
6TH DISC: SEXUAL CONTACT / 
7TH DISC: SPEECH
8TH DISC: IV HOOKUP ITERFACE
9TH-10TH DISC: SEXUAL PARTNER DATABASE
 
         ------------------------------------------------------

That night two people saw the program description Xenon had uploaded to 'The
Illusory Underground' BBS. One of them was his contact, Divinesque. Divinesque
promptly contacted his contact, Neon Chameleon. They both talked over this,
and the capture file. Neon never actually saw the capture file or the program
description, so it was about 3:30 AM before they finally