Freedom
by Te
10/99

Disclaimers: All things belong to Paramount. And, 
like, other people, too. Look, I have a hard time 
paying attention to credits, yo.

Spoilers: For Virtuosity.

Ratings Note: R for themes, implied homoeroticism. 

Summary: A day in the life of Parker Barnes. 

Author's Note: Yeah, so I finally watched the whole
of Virtuosity the other day, and can you say 
LUST? I knew you could. 

A not-quite-typical dedicated hunter goes after 
brilliant-and-sadistic-killer flick. Denzel 
Washington plays hunter Parker Barnes, Russel 
Crowe plays sadistic killer SID 6.7. See Te drool.

For Circle2 challenge. Oh yeah, and Madison 
was the criminal psychologist sidekick type played
by Kelly Lynch. 

Acknowledgments: To Viridian for sharing so 
much of the soundtrack, to Spike for the quote 
that came in such a timely, timely fashion, and 
to Kasha and Dawn Sharon for fine audiencing.

*

Morning comes silently, shockingly, and Parker 
rolls out of bed into a crouch. His eyes are still
gummed shut but his body is ready. 

This move has been instinctive since before the
first 'filing error' had been corrected and he 
had been moved out of general population. 

Just because he is now outside, now and forever 
outside, does not mean he feels any need to break 
himself of this habit. If his body feels the need to
sleep so deeply that the alarm is a surprise, then
his body can damned well respond in the proper 
fashion.

Parker knows this is not the healthiest way to be.

Parker has watched dozens of healthy people die.

The water on his face, his body, is only lukewarm 
when he steps into the shower -- this is a habit he
would like to break, but he cannot abide the steam 
from a hot shower. 

(There could be things in the steam.)

The words do not come in his voice, but that's 
only to be expected. They are not his words. Parker 
Barnes' home is small, spare, and secured. 

He spends the money from his quietly reinstated
and questionably large pension on the fees for a 
private gym and baseball games and 
paraphernelia. Madison's child -- he will not say 
her name when he does not have to, because it is
not the right one -- is a joy to him. The rest he 
saves, quietly, quietly.

One day he will buy the cheap tract houses that
surround his own and raze them to the ground. 

He will plant no trees. 

The towel is discomfitingly new, so are his clothes.
He is nearly two sizes smaller than he used to be, 
but it was no use -- he still finds his own body 
fascinating, the darkness and muscle. 

(The scars and the seeming acres of negative 
space.)

The mirrors are now steel, the images fuzzy. He 
shaves with an electric razor.

The flesh would be red wherever he passed across,
against the grain, always was a rebel shot those 
reporters vultures shot them killed them oh why 
didn't you taste --

He slaps himself once, sharp report echoing off 
bare white walls. Madison had asked Parker 
repeatedly if he had noticed any ill-effects from 
the last trip into VR, had mentioned the utter 
lack of failsafes and the off-the-chart readings. 

He had wanted to respond.

SID 6.7 had been a sculpture amid trash. Although
his body had been broken amid the shards of glass, 
they had been *clean* breaks, more reminiscent of 
marble than flesh. Monstrous ruined statue.

But there had been enough life -- and there was no 
doubt, never any doubt that it was, indeed, life -- 
for Sid to take him by the neck and nearly kill him 
(you were never supposed to die, what would I do 
if you died?), and there had been enough life for 
Sid to reach one thin, thin tendril toward the tiny 
piece of silicone so helpfully implanted in his brain,
and there had been enough life to... linger. 

(I never, ever thought I would have so much 
appreciation for the Los Angeles Police 
Department.)

The Chief had destroyed the tracking equipment, 
but in the end that had been quite meaningless. 
The poisoned chip in his brain was controlled by 
a semi-dormant sociopathic artificial intelligence
that could kill him at any moment... Considering 
the state of the city government, little had 
changed. 

(I have always loved you.)

The bag is first, and Parker abuses it 
systematically. The hardest part is always 
deliberately slowing his speed for the early 
"rounds." Time is dangerous, and has to be eaten.

The last five rounds would be at his normal 
speed. 

The faces he sees as he punches run like wax. He 
wants to know if the image is his own, but it 
would be wrong to ask. 

(It's yours now, Parker, all yours.)

The kicks are the best, unconscious and far less 
intimate, but he has been told that his shin 
bones show signs of microscopic cracks. Surgery 
would be paid for, no questions asked, but Parker 
does not want any more machinery in his body. 
His left arm was artificial, and is now only 
nominally his.

Parker is thankful that the technology afforded 
to inmate care is so primitive. SID's movements 
through him remain controllable, most of the 
time. He does not allow himself to consider the 
idea that SID could be changing things within him.

Parker limits his sodium, potassium, and 
magnesium intake rigorously -- only the bare 
limit of what will keep him healthy. Sometimes 
he wonders why he bothers to stay alive, but his 
dreams of the afterlife are pixeled things, vast 
only through a perception far more powerful 
than his own. 

Sometimes he can smell himself on the artificial
limb when he wakes. At first he wept, now it is 
almost a gift. SID is far, far quieter on those days.

Five hundred push-ups later it is time for his run. 

Parker arms himself only with a small blackjack. 
He knows that if SID decided to act the small 
caution would be essentially meaningless -- Parker
himself has been a weapon since the days when 
VR was still mostly a terribly expensive fantasy 
in green and grey -- but the little things still 
matter. 

The sun climbs the sky, vicious through the 
thickened air. He knows his parents never had to 
worry about skin cancer, but melanin alone is no 
longer enough. It seems vaguely unfair, as 
though society had stolen one of the last 
advantages to being dark. 

(They don't deserve you.)

'They' are the people Parker passes on his daily 
run. Some are familiar, many are not. Most of 
them seem fat and hopelessly blank. Sometimes 
eyes shine bright at him, tug at him, but usually 
the faces surrounding those eyes are filthy, scabbed
and matted things. Kin was where you found it, and
yet he lacks the patience.

In three days Madison's daughter and he would 
attend the Angels game where the air was a little 
sweeter. Tomorrow he would go to the library. The
next day would be the grocery store. When he 
came home, he would write his customary monthly
letter to Linda's parents. Before he went to 
Madison's home, he would mail it. The days of 
acclimation to human company would do him 
good, though Madison's child always seemed to 
break through anyway...

It paid to be prepared. 

Cement all around him, waves of heat and city 
stink rising off the roads. Too many cars, too 
many people, none of them looking at him, 
really looking. 

It was always the same, but each day he could go
a little faster, run a little farther away from the 
white walls that kept him alone with himself and 
the other. There was always the possibility of 
distraction out here (as if there could ever be any
other), even if he could not let it go too far...

Sit-ups, more push-ups, more bag work, and then 
Parker ties his left hand carefully, so carefully 
behind his back in the latest incarnation of the 
waist-rig he fashioned for himself. It is time for 
knife-work, and as he tosses he watches for 
patterns, meaning in the thousands of tiny 
slashes in the Target wall. 

Sometimes he closes his eyes, because often he can
hit the arbitrary point of the day well enough to 
make no new slashes at all.

Behind his eyes there is wax, and memory that feels 
more and more like his own. 

SID fought this confinement at first, now he 
whispers things Parker will not hear. Or perhaps 
it is merely gibberish. 

There are flashes in the wax of an unfamiliar 
male form, perfectly defined and yet somehow 
not. The flesh seems new and baby-soft. The 
invitation is subtle but obvious. Parker needs no 
face for it. The knives he tosses go through as 
through molasses, welcomed and released. 
Changed for the journey.

When Parker retrieves them from the wall they 
are neither warm nor wet, but then the flesh 
was synthetic anyway.

He feeds himself the weight-gainer his 
nutritionist designed to his strict specifications.
The taste is unremarkable, the sensation is 
never anything but terribly erotic. To be filled 
this way, added to however artificially... Parker 
groans helplessly (I have always loved you) and
rests his head on the small wooden table and 
breathes. 

Several minutes later he begins his evening 
stretches. This is a slow, meticulous process that
will leave him limber and pain-free enough for 
the strength training tomorrow. 

He is blessedly exhausted by the time he begins 
the pectoral stretches and it is a most 
pleasurable tease to finish off with the sweet, 
fleeting ache pulsing mellowly through his 
muscles. The bed summons him soon enough,
though, and he will sleep just like this tonight -- 
sharply musked.

It is a luxury he rarely allows himself. When he 
smells at his fingers tomorrow morning he will be
able to believe that he cannot tease the scent of 
his own sex from the musk. He can believe that SID 
was not there, and that SID does not love him.

And SID will fight harder to put the lie to this.

And Parker will fight back.

And SID will love him forever.

And Parker will never be alone. 

end. 

"I have eyes for you to give you dirty looks.
I have words that do not come from children's books
there's a trick with a knife I'm learning to do
And ev'rything I've got belongs to you."

-from "Ev'rything I've Got" by Rogers & Hart

**