December 4th 1998

Agent Zero steps out of his house into the dark morning dusk, breath condensing into brief clouds. The track to the road is frozen mud which cracks under foot as he makes his way to the public bus stop to take him to the city centre. The ride is dull, punctuated only by the strobe of a broken fluorescent tube above his head and glimpses of a beautiful pink dawn sky. Frost lies everywhere turning the world into contrasts of black and white.

He gets off the bus and wades through the commuters to the railway station where the company have a taxi waiting for him. The driver stands outside it stamping his feet, an ugly man, young with the look of a bouncer. A brief moment of identification and he climbs into the warmth of the cab interior. They drive off listening to the clash of the radios, heading towards the company house.

On arrival he signs a receipt and climbs up the few steps to the old brick doorway. It is a beautiful place, made of old sandstone built by some mill owner in the middle of the last century. The company delegates welcome him and he is shown into the meeting room. There the directors sit, not acknowledging his presence. They are all unaware of his position as agent and of the agency he works for, invisible, silent and non-existent in this space time coord. Too good an opportunity to be missed. Zero reaches into his bag and flicks a switch.

 "Nothing personal" he lies before he erupts into an explosion of flame.

 The agent looks down. He has prepared for this moment all of his life, he knows what about to happen. He sends his spirit up, above the animated ghosts of those with him in the dead land, avoiding the dogs summoned to take them onwards. The dogs leap in amongst the directors and managers tearing them apart before dragging the still animated and torn limbs off before Yama, king of the dead. Yama sits, his evil glare piercing with laser shots into the jumbled remains while Zero looks on, standing to his left. One by one the pieces are sorted by the guards and thrown before the giant mirror that is fixed by Yama's side. One by one the old men are forced to look into it, see themselves, and scream before disintegrating into dust which falls inbetween the cracks of the floor back to the living world below. Judgment and sentencing is always passed by your reflection. There is no other way. Then it is Agent Zero's turn. He steps forward, looks into the mirror, and sees himself.

"The man, identified as a relatively low level employee, was heard to shout a single word before the detonation that ended the lives of 16 people, including himself. 'Aramchek'. Is this the name of some new terrorist group or cult or is it the product of a sick, lonely and desparate mind? As yet, no demands have been made, no responsibility taken for this monstrous act of violence. This is Ken Kenneth of TraK news, goodnight."

He was in what they'd nicknamed the bardo, after the Tibetan word for the state inbetween lives. His consciousness blipped him for the briefest of moments as he was dump-loaded down into a new body from the CaSC (developed with future tech sent back for the battle. Using the model of nature a skilled technician can create a bio-model of ones and zeros capable of holding a human personality; a soft machine. There is some degradation over prolonged periods of storage and an agent can become lost in the Bardo, "going zero". The other problem agents face with this method follows in line with the work of K in the early 20th C. Each time an agent adopts a new body he is affected by its physical structure and his personality subtly remoulded. Several agents have been turned because of serious flaws with the body that has been grown with them making them more open to Control. It is all an unpleasant experience and the agents look forward to a day when suicide is no longer necessary.) He opened his eyes into a different world, again.

"I lost my fear of dogs in Tibet"