The early spring rain was coming down hard, as per usual, in Seattle that morning. Those of you that didn't drive had to wake up at five AM to get to the office on time. There were no jobs scedualed until nine, but the dispatcher wanted everyone in at seven this morning for a couple of announcements.

Pulling on the distinctive dark green JMS shirt and making sure you had your umbrella, you step out into the predawn rain. You can see your breath, through half-opened eyes. Why did rushhour have to start so early? Why did public transit have to be so slow? Most importantly, why did the JMS office have to be so deep into the industrial part of town, very far away from anyones house?

The office was too brightly lit for your tastes. The flourecent lights hurt your eyes after the calming dark of the commute here.

Almost everyone was already gathered in the break room. Leroy, the dispatcher, a conservativly dressed skinny black man with a booming deep voice betraying his small stature, was already at the head of the long break table, waiting for everyone to file it.

After parking his Harley, Jimmy waves to the secretary and walks past to the locker room. He stores his helmet and triggers the Rapid-transit to the company colors. He walks in and takes a seat near the door if available.

Johnny wakes up and rolls over, expecting to find Trixxy there for a little morning exercise, instead finding a facefull of his own socks. He grunts and pushes the socks away, eyes still closed. Figures she'd be gone, it's rare she stays in the morning. Hell, he doesn't even know where she lives.

Probably back to daddy's condo in some posh gated community. Not that he minds being the one she choses to roll with while slumming it. Girl's dynamite in bed. He becomes faintly aware of the tone of an alarm clock across the room, and his mind snaps into overdrive.

`Shit, what time is it.`

He bolts upright and spies the time. It's 06:15. Fifteen minutes to be up and out the door to get to work on time. He slides off of his matress, standing and stretching. Heading out of his front door, he snags up a towel and shave kit that were draped over one of his chairs, and heads down the hall to that floor's washroom. Not like anyone lives on the floor anyway; whole building's condemned. He doesn't bother with a shower, opting instead for the George Carlin washing four: asshole, armpits, teeth and crotch. He checks his hair, making sure the electric blue dye's still good, and checks his latest piercing, the nostril job, for signs of infection. Big Jake may be a great guy, but his facilities are gross. Confident all is well in infection-free land, Johnny steps back a moment, posing for the mirror. Sure, he's no bodybuilder, but he's looking buff, at least enough to keep Trixxy happy. He throws off a few Bruce Lee moves at the mirror and heads back down the hall into his place.

Throwing the wash gear back onto its chair, Johnny grabs up an old Alienware t-shirt, smells it to make sure it's not totally funky, and slides it on. He Hastily dons yesterday's pair of black cargo pants, straps on his wrist spikes and chains, and grabs up his pack, which is ready to go save one thing. Tossing a look at the display on his computer as he goes to grab his deck, Johnny grunts. 06:25, he's got five minutes to get going. Should be enough time to just check his messages, and see what's going on on Shadowlands. The data haven was a sirens call to him. He grunts, and drops his pack down, sitting in the chair, and jacking in.

First thing Johnny does when he gets online is set a system alert for himself. Five minutes on, and he's gone. Then he opens his mind to the shared hallucination that is the Matrix. As the dataflow washes over him, Johnny Jett, the styalized Matrix persona of himself, dives for his anonymous messagebox. It's the usual fill; an invite to a virtual rave from Parity, more parking tickets to be eliminated for Rick Glenn (you'd think the guy'd learn not to park in the judge's spot by now), a couple snippets of fresh code from Cypher, and a love note from Trixxy. He deals with the messages quickly enough, and slides from the account, heading for the nearest Shadowlands node. While he's delving into a SIG flame war, and coming up with the nerve to write a jab of his own, the system alarm goes off. Jett grunts, and reels back enough to set it another five minutes, when he notices the time. 06:40.

Shit

He'd been in system for fifteen minutes already. He must have reset the alarm twice already without realizing it. He logs off hastily, and restracts the wire into the deck head bent down to let his eyes adjust to the meat world again. Cramming the deck into the bag, he tosses it onto his ratty sofa, and sits down, hauling on his blades and sluffing into his leather.

Hitting street level in record time, Johhny begins the usually half hour grind to work at hyperspeed. He's internally cursing himself for jumping online. He knows better than to jack in before work, but it's soo tempting. Johhny tips a California howdy to the local gangers, who responds in kind. He splashes right through a puddle, spraying down a pair of brave Lone Star foot patrol cops, and lets out a whoop.

Ah, gotta love the squatter's life.

A half hour later, Johhny steps into the breakroom, hair still wet. His chains are stowed, and he's wearing the company shirt the management insisted he wear, but he still had his spikes and cargo pants on. In place of his blades, he wore heavy combat boots, nicked from one of his dad's old army buddies a few years back, and he's got a pair of yellow lensed shades on now too. As he steps in, Johnny's securing a stud in place of the spike he usually wears in the piercing just below his lower lip. Stupid company policy. He'd almost have been on time if he didn't have to replace all of his piercings.

`Sorry I'm late, had a hot date last night, and she just wouldn't let me leave without another go round.`

Some of the employees chuckle into their coffees, and Leroy frowns slightly and looks at his watch. Well, at least the kid didn't actually hold anything up. Everyone alwayse ended up just scratching they balls for twenty minutes before getting to work in the morning. As long as everybody made their site time, he didn't really care if they were late into or out of the office.

Cyril's commute today is much like that of every other day. Riding the rail, surrounded by illiterates who have the gall to look down on him just because of a few tusks.
At his stop, Cyril disembarks and walks the rest of the distance. Continuing past what passes for security and into the glaring fluorescence.

"Have I missed anything or are we still in the idle delay phase of any meeting?"

Whatever the answer, Cyril finds an empty seat and joins the other employees at the table.

Sid wakes up to the loud beeping of his alarm clock.

"Dammit...", he groans, head still reeling from the amount of alcohol he'd consumed last night. Eyes still losed, he feels around for Jill. She wasn't there. She must've gone out with her friends, or something. Sid rolls out of bed, and heads to the shower, washing himself quickly. Once out, he shaves his face, and then the short hair growing out of the sides of his head, making his green mohawk proper again. He combs the remains of the wax out, and wets it down, parting it in the middle so it kind of looks like he has hair. Bright green hair. He goes out and gets dressed gets dressed, pulling on a pair of boxers and some relatively clean jeans, his green work shirt, and his studded leather jacket, being careful not to cut his fingers on any of the punks sticking out the inside of the sleeve. He leaves his wallet chains and spiked bands on the table, though.

Sid quickly downs a cup of soykaf, then runs out, locking the door securely behind him, lest some of his friends show up and trash the place in his absence. He runs down the stairs, his boots thudding the concrete with each step. Once outside, he hops in his Americar and turns it on, the music blasting him even further awake. He quickly turns it back down to 'Morning Volume', and speeds off to JMS moving.

He skids into his parking spot and shows up a little ahead of Johnny. Sid heads inside an sits down in a chair.

"Yo, what's up?"

Johhny heads over to the coffee machine and fixes himself a mug, half full of sugar. Hell, if he's not gonna get the real thing at home, he's sure as frag gonna enjoy it here. He moves to grab a chair, reversing it to sit cowboy style, arms draped over the back.

`Why's it always like a funeral in the mornings here?`

He's fully aware, as it seems he always is, full of the energy of youth.

Jimmy grunts, "Soycaf. Good idea."
He stands and walks over to the machine, poors a cup of high test, grabs a bagel and sits down, gnawing on the bread to silence the growls of the lack of dinner last night.

Gino gets up at 5:30 when the alarm goes off. He goes straight in a very warm shower and then shaves and puts on a lot of Cologne. He wants to smell good and look good for the ladies. He puts on some working clothes, not failing to put on some jewelry as well, including his large golden medallion. He then goes down to Luigi's to get his usual soycheese-soyeggs-soybacon on a soybagel special with soycoffee for 5.95 . He likes spending some time there before work while reading the Seattle Daily. Especially on rainy days. Thinking about Sathurday night, which he spent with a really nice-looking elf prostitute, he drove down to JMS Moving in his bright red, convertible GM-3220 ZX Turbo.

Gino arrives at 6:50. He parks his car and makes sure the anti-theft system is on. He goes in and gets himself another cup of coffee. He sits down at the table and waits for everyone to arrive.

"Good Morning, Mr Leroy."

At Johnny's explanation for being late, Gino thinks to himself with an obvious grin: There's no way he can get nice women and I can't, this just can't be. Look at him, all arogant and young and with no manners. He's lying, for sure. He then takes a sip of coffee to swallow his thoughts down.

It's only when he's seated that Johnny gets a whiff of Gino, and his piered nose crinkles.

`Shit Gino, you bathe in cologne today? You really gotta spring for the good stuff if you're gonna do that.`

He shifts his seat a bit, and swirls his soycaf about, letting the sugar disolve it into a sludge.

"You should know that my Cologne is Acqua di Napoli, one of the finest italian Cologne. It's not my fault if you're not cultured enough to know about the latest quality fragrances for men, Johnny. And you would definitely need some."

The young fool would not insult him on top of that. It was too much for Gino to take without answering back.

"Settle down, kids," Leroy intones, reverberating the room with the bass of his voice. "we have a meeting to run before todays work."

"First on the agenda: last night, one of the trucks was stolen. IF you know anything about this, if the truck is back in 24 hours, we won't press charges. If it's not, we will nail the ass of whoever did it to the wall."

"Also: I know nobody has been getting enough hours, but we're spreading it out as evenly as we can. The bad news is that it's going to get worse. It looks like for the next month or so, we have practically nothing booked. I'm sorry, but it's very, very slow. Some of you may wish to get other jobs. We don't blame you."

"The good news is that we expect it to pick up considerably after that. We'll have so much work we'll barely have time to send you home to sleep. So if you can just be patient, we'll all be rolling in the nuyen soon enough."

"So what do we do now? You didn't ask us to come in that early just to tell us 'Well go back home now'. If it's all about the truck, I can tell you that I don't know anything about it. Is there any jobs at all for us today?"

"Yeah, there's work for a few more days, yet. James, Bradford, Brandon and Earl, You'll be over at the UofW geology department. They need core samples moved. Gino, take truck #4 over to the Mitsuhama dealership over on 28th and Boren. They have a bunch of motorcycles that need to be moved to Dallas on Wednesday. I need them in the warehouse, ready to get loaded onto the semi Wednesday morning." he tosses some keys to Jimmy, "Take Sid, Cyril and Johnny and go do that job. Crew van #2 is warming up waiting for you."

"Yolanda, I need you to take Rob Holmes and Rob Davenport over to the Renraku Arcology. They've just reopened the western half of the 37th floor and they need you to haul out the old furniture and get them some newer stuff. By the time you finish clearing the place out, we should have what you need back here at the warehouse."

"Let's get cracking, people."

Johnny was about to crack out a one liner about Gino's need to overload a woman's senses when Leroy called for the quiet. He just chuckles, and takes a slug off of his suger laden soycaf while he listens.

He grunts at the revelation about the next month. Sure, business is going to pick up to the point where he might have to sleep at the office, but if he doesn't get enough hours this month, he may actually be living there.

He shakes it off though, and waits until everyone starts filing out nodding Leroy's way.

`Lemme guess, I get to sit around looking pretty all day?`

He blinks, his mind replaying the last few moments.

`Wait a second... I'm on grunt duty?`

He stands on up, coffee hanging loosely from his hand. He's moving motorcycles? I mean damn, at least he could be on Arcology duty. Might be interesting to get a peek inside the place. Corporate tightasses usually didn't take kindly to him being up in their turf.

"Come on kid, it'll put muscles on that scrawny frame o'yours."
Jimmy grabs his pack and helmet out of his locker and heads out to the truck lot. Opening the truck, he shouts to the rest of the crew,
"Come on boys, we're burning daylight."

Sid doesn't look too worried when he hears about the slow business. His apartment is paid through the next few months.

"Alright, moving motorcycles! Sound menial!", Sid says. He then downs a large cup of coffee, then scoots his chair back and stands up.

"I'm ready when you are.", he says, sliding his jacket on.

Cyril gets up and gets a cup of soycaf for the road. On the way to the trucks, he checks his reflection in a window to confirm that he is presentable.

"I wonder how many sales does it take to be more cost effective to build a factory in Dallas rather than ship the cycles across at least two other countries. But I'm not getting paid for economics advice, lets go get the shipment."

`Scrawny my ass.`

Jett grunts, and downs the rest of the sugared up sludge in three solid gulps. He wipes a hand across his mouth and shakes his head.

`Just let me grab my jacket, I'll be right out.`

He sets the mug into the sink as he passes, and heads into the locker area. He slides into his leather, clips on his pager and cellphone, and slides his pocket secretary into the inner pocket of the jacket. He frowns a moment, regarding his deck. He grunts and slides the deck into his pack, shouldering it. Better safe than sorry. Don't need some sticky fingered goon to be pawing his baby after all.

A few minutes later Johnny steps on up to the van.

`Shotgun!`

"You'll need one if you think you're riding next to me with no shower."
Jimmy grins as he hauls himself up into the cab.

`Hey now, I'm not the guy dousing himself in cheap cologne. 100% pure sweet smelling man here.`

Johnny tosses his bag into the back as he jumps into the passenger seat.

"Yeah, the sweet smell of man-funk.", Sid remarks, sliding into the back seat.

"I'm buying you an alarm clock someday."

Cyril enters the truck as well.

"Shall we get this olfactory debate on the road?"

"Eh Stinky, you shut the fuck up about my Cologne. Acqua di Napoli is great stuff and you obviously don't know anything about good odors."

"All right, about the ride. Follow me on the highway, we'll talk about when and where to stop along the way. You guys have a good time together," he says with a grin.

Gino walks to the truck he would have to drive. On his way, he subtlely smells himself. I didn't even put much Cologne today. Johnny's gotta be a real idiot.

Eyeing Gino as he walks away to the other van he begins thinking to himself as he pulls out and heading to the pickup. Just how does he afford that convertible, that cologne and the gawdy jewelry on what he's gotta be making here?

Checking the van's clock against the one on his phone, satisfied they have a little extra time, even allowing for traffic.
"Anybody else hungry?"
He pulls into the nearest McHugh's and looks over to Johnny.
"I want a #4, extra onion, with a side order of purple Nerps. Coke to drink."

Finally, after a bit of farting around, everyone arrives. The dealership is much nicer that anything you've seen before.

The sparkling clean floor is entirely covered in the most recent, most Sota, most badassed bikes you've ever seen. Crotch rockets and highway bikes, even some quads, they're all here. The detailing on each and every single one of them involves precious metals to some degree. There are at least sixty bikes, all said and done.

The snotty looking Japanese man in the best suit here walks up. Disguistedly, he says, "You must be the moving crew. Please move your truck around back and take them out the loading docks, I'll not have you scaring the customers." It's enough to make you want to slap that stupid english accent right out of his mouth. But no, you can't do that. You need to pay the bills, and you'll be needing the money from this job.

Jimmy pulls the truck around to the back and parks it at the loading docks.
"Alright, everyone be on your best behavior here."
Jimmy hops out and opens the back door.

Gino drives the truck to the indicated location and gets out of the vehicle.

Cyril gets out and looks over the cargo. He takes a moment to estimate how well they will fit, and then proceeds to start loading the bikes.

It takes two trips to do it safely, and although this could normally be done in 4 hours, tops, it takes ten, what with that damned English Japanese guy being so obsessive about the bikes. "Watch it, wankers, if you scratch the paint I'll have your jobs." Man, that guy deserves an ass-kicking. Finally, you get them into the warehouse, and stacked up nicely. Each has its own protective blanket and they have to be far enough apart that if one falls it won't domino, but the job is finally finished.

All in all, not bad for a days work.

Then Leroy comes down "Guys, I have an announcement."

He paces a little, stops to speak, paces a little more, runs his fingers through his hair, and then finally spits it out. "We can't afford to keep you. I'm sorry, guys, but we're going to have to let you all go. It was a tough decision to make, but it had to be somebody, you understand?"

"What!? No!

"You can't do that to me. I'm one of your most loyal employees. I've been in this company for more than 7 years, you can't fire me like you would throw away an old pair of socks! Mr. Leroy, come on, you can't do that to ME. Think about it carefully, I'm one of your best drivers."

Johnny'd seen it coming. Of course he hadn't wanted it to happen, but he'd seen it coming. He grunts when Gino starts to protest rather loudly, and mutters something, although he mutters it loud enough the drawf'll easily be able to hear it.

`You're just steamed 'cause no one else'll ever hire your sorry ass...`

Of course he doesn't really mean it, well, not entirely, but he's a bit angry right now. Right he should be, the company's obviously got no idea what a good tech's worth these days.

He clears his throat, and sits up a bit in the chair he was slumped in.

`We at least getting two our two weeks pay?`

He'd been fired from enough jobs to know the severence deal.

"Well fuck.", Sid says, not finding any words to better suit the situation.

"I guess that bit about work picking up was bullshit, then? Or maybe it applies to the other teams...", he says, getting a little pissed.

He briefly considers cursing out Leroy, but he's not really that angry.

"Like Johnny said, we getting any severance?"

"Guys, don't make it tougher. Leroy doesn't want this, St. Jude knows he wouldn't want to do this. Let's just get out of his way and go get a beer."
Jimmy goes to his locker, retrieves his pack and helmet. He eye's Leroy, silently warning him to not make a liar out of him.

To Jimmy's comment, Gino doesn't move a quarter of an inch. He is determined to try to keep his job and will do as much as he possibly can to try and convince Leroy to reconsider. When he sees that there is no more hope, he will stop.

Cyril seeks out a matrix access jack, plugs in, and attempts a quick scan of job listings as he watches Gino's attempts to change the situation.

Leroy looks generally saddened. "Actually, we're only keeping Yolanda, Brandon, James and Earl. Everyone else is getting let go, and I'm not even sure if we'll be able to give them enough hours, frankly. We may have to shut the place down in the next two monthes here. It's rough all over, you know that." Leroy places a hand on Gino's shoulder comfortingly "I'm really sorry."

Cyril doesn't find a great deal for work. All the listings he sees have been up since the last time he was job-hunting, so they've doubtless been filled long since.

Gino is very saddened, seeing that there is no hope of keeping the job. Leroy is not responsible, he can see that the guy had to do what he did. Still, he's angry.

"I guess you had no choice, but I can't believe that this company is actually going out of business. I've been here so long and now it's gonna end just like this? Damn it! I wanted to keep this fucking job. Fuck that. I'm getting out of this shithole if that's how it is."

He kept cursing on his way out of the room.

Johnny would be looking for a tech job right about now, but he's been looking every day since he got to this company. He had search programs filtering pretty much all the time back home. It was fruitless.

So he's got nothing better to do but sit here, and enjoy one last soycaf. Might be the last time he'll get real sugar in a while.

`No severence then, I asume?`

Sid leans back in his chair, drinking from his mug of soykaf.

"Well, tough times dude. Sorry to hear.", he says. He finishes off the mug and stands up.

"I guess I'll go then. It's been real.", he says, then walks out, pausing when he gets to the door.

"Hey Johnny, wanna go get some drinks?"

Jimmy heads out the door, planting his helmet on his head and triggering the RT to it's normal, non-work patterns. He kicks on the bike and revs it a bit.

`We hoofin' it today?`

He's all for a drink right now. Hell, he's all for getting completely wasted. He's just got to get back into his gear, and clean out his locker, so to speak. Johnny's half tempted to jump back into the company's host one last time, and do a little redecorating.

"Nah, we'll take my car.", Sid says, clicking his keychain and unlocking it.

"I know a bar you might like. It's called Drag's Hole. Gets pretty violent, though, so watch yourself."

"Mind if I join in on the bar run?"

Deciding against the vandalism of the host, at least for now, Johnny starts to replace each of his piercings. Nice shiny chrome, all of them, it's a metal jungle out there after all.

`You kidding me? I can handle myself Sid, null sheen.`

In short order he's out of his work shirt, having donned a tight black muscle shirt to show off his tats. He slides back into his leather, loads up his pack, and replaces his yellow lensed work shades with mirrorshades. In short order, he joins Sid in heading out to the car, taking a moment to look back to the place he'd expected to work at for at least another few months.

"Hell no, Cyril. The more the merrier. Lets just stop at my loft so I can change first.", he says. He gets in the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

"You know, that was the first job I actually enjoyed...Hey, now that we're clocked out, wanna go kick the piss out of that prick down at the dealership?", he says as he leaves the JMS Moving building in the dust.

He pulls into his apartment's carport, and gets out. He heads inside and opens the door of the rickety elevator, and once everyone gets in, he sends it up to the top floor, where he gets out and opens up his apartment.

"Yeah, this is home. Not very nice, but its spacious. We can't stay too long or some people will show up, wanting to hang, or something.", he says, and heads to his mattress. He strips off his work shirt, and gets a sleeveless black shirt from the pile of clean clothes near it. After that, he goes into the bathroom and re-waxes his mohawk, then sprays it to solidify it. He goes back out and gets pen and a slip of paper and writes

Dear Jill,

Got fired. Went drinking. Be back later.

Love, Sid.

He places the note on the table, then turns to his two guests.

"Alright, let's go.", he says, heading back out to his car.

`Why settle for just beating the piss out of the jackass... why not vandalize the bikes?`

He's been thinking of it since they were fired. Well, ok, since Sid mentioned the prick.

`I mean, we don't know where he lives offhand, but we know where the warehouse is.`

Jimmy peels out, heading for the Drag Hole, once there he finds a stool at teh bar and waits for the others.

Gino gets right out of there, takes his car, and rolls down to a nearby bar, the Drag's Hole. He gets a beer and chugs it. A few minutes afterwards, he sees Jimmy come in as he receives his second beer and goes to sit next to him.

"Eh Jimmy, I didn't expect to see you here, but hey, we're in the same boat so I guess you need a drink as much as I do. You want a beer?" says Gino as he turns to ask the barman for one more if the answer from Jimmy is positive.

"Yeah, I'll take a beer. Thanks."