Scene 15: Sunday afternoon
 
With Cal and Nicky resting, Cecie practising her sword form while she awaits a call back from Dellarose, and Hal examining the scans from Joe's cube, Monica and Frank chat briefly, but are interrupted when Cecie calls "a council of war", to brief the group on what she knows about the CRF's plans to move Monica and Joe. Until they receive the call back, no one is to leave the relative safety of the Press Box. Hal, however, is skeptical of the CRF's intentions toward Joe. He takes Cecie aside and shows her something he found on a hidden CRF data cache he had hacked into, revealing one of the CRF's secret experiments on Mecha processors. Appalled at what she sees there, Cecie, impelled by her love for Joe and the duty she has assumed toward him and Monica to help them find David, she decides they have to get out. Now. Tsivil suggests they hide out in a bunker behind the Blackhill Observatory, where she and Sirus both work. Hal suggests they hole up for the night in the Heart of Rouge Hotel, a fleabag hotel on the city's waterfront, where the InVaginators, the hacking cell Hal belongs to frequently meet for group hack sessions and to trade parts for contraband MetaFlesh VR systems. This however poses difficulties, since Joe frequently met up with customers. But since they are all now fugitives, they realize they must assume false identities. Tsivil, who once worked for a company that produced IDs, promises to make IDs for the group.
 
That settled, the group heads out for the Heart of Rouge Hotel; once everyone has settled in a cluster of rooms on the third floor, Hal contacts one of his "friends" in the InVaginators to procure a new I/O matrix for his VR unit. Frank heads out to obtain printing supplies for Tsivil -- and live rounds for the "Chicago typewriter"...

Scene 16: Sunday, late afternoon to early evening:

On his way out to pick up the new part for his VR unit, Hal stops to chat with Cal, who isn't feeling so hot. As Tsivil naps and Sirus tries to make the rooms presentable and Cecie cuddles with Joe, Monica, assuming her false identity as a woman of the world, steps out for a walk. Cecie, making a tour of inspection, discovers Monica has disappeared. Joe dashes out after Monica, with Cecie on his heels and Tsivil trailing them. They finally catch up with Monica in a nearby cafe, where she has confronted the manager for his abuse of a waitress-Mecha, to which he replies by slapping Monica in the face. Cecie and Joe intervene and lead her back tothe hotel. With Tsivil keeping Joe occupied, Cecie confronts Monica for wandering away, then explains why they are in even greater danger now than before.

Upstairs in Room 606, the regular meeting place of the InVaginators, the hacking cell Hal belongs to, Sledge, a hacker friend of Hal's, arrives with the part Hal needs. But when Hal offers to pay for it in cash, Sledge begs him to barter it for some of the encryption code Hal created for a homebrew virus. Hal grudgingly accepts the offer, although he'll have to go back to the Press Box to retrieve the disks containing the viruses. He returns to the group's temporary quarters, where he installs the new part then "goes Nightside", entering the VR realm to make sure his personal construct was not corrupted and to seek any news on the movements of the CRF or the ARM. Frank returns with most of the printing supplies for Tsivil, but had no luck getting the live rounds for "the Chicago Typewriter" from Georgie, one of Cal's contacts. With evening approaching, Cecie orders take-out from a nearby Chinese restaurant. While she and Hal go out to pick up the meal, Joe and Frank do their best to comfort Monica, who is still shaken from being slapped. As they return from the Heart of Rouge, Cecie and Hal spot a shadowy figure who appears to be watching them, but they can't be sure.

As the group sits down to dinner, Hal unsettles everyone's composure -- particularly Cal's -- when he opens the box containing his own meal: the house specialty, roasted newts. Curious over this disruption, Joe makes a startlingly logical deduction about the nature of food, effectively proving he's becoming more than just a pretty face...

Scene 17: Sunday night

After the roast newt debacle, the group manages to regain their  composure. Cal slips out to scare up some clothes for her and Nicky. Frank and Joe do their best to comfort Monica. Discussing their various pasts, Frank admits that, during his college years, he carried on an affair with a female lover-Mecha named Aubrey, who came to a terrible end. Meanwhile, Nicky drowses, but in his dreams there arises a strange beast like a lion.

Frank heads out to make a phonecall to Terez, his elder twin sister, letting her know that he's going to be out of town for some time, covering "the story to end all stories". Monica, who has gone with him to get some fresh air, spots a shadowy figure who appears to be watching them.

Hal heads out to the Press Box to collect the disks containing his homebrew viruses and a few other supplies. But while he is there, the phone rings. Guessing it's the CRF calling back, he lets it ring.  After making sure they can't call back, he heads back to the Heart of   Rouge Hotel. On the way back, he encounters Cal, who seems more out of sorts than usual.

While Cecie and Joe snuggle and Monica drowses and Tsivil starts making IDs, Frank heads out again to see if he can find some "BBs for the overgrown BB gun" from one of Cal's contacts. He returns empty-handed from consulting Georgie, so he heads out to meet with the more dangerous Jimmy Moltov, who works in the Naval Yard.

Hal, on returning from his scavenging mission, discovers -- *GASP!* -- Tsivil has moved his computer set-up to her room. His outburst  startles Joe, who quails back into the corner. Spotting Joe like this, Hal approaches him and finds the usually voluable Mecha reduced to a nervous wreck (if that were possible). Hal manages to talk Joe through this, finding that Joe appears to be having a flashback, as it were, of being attacked by an enraged customer, Allison Timmerman. Once Joe is out of the worst, Hal engages him in a virtual fulfillment of an old fantasy he's had for a long time, and has Joe take on Frank's hair and eye color, reenacting a moment back in Hal's college days when he tried to seduce Frank. Cecie, in the other room,  overhears this with mingled horror and disgust.

Once the festivities are over, she tiptoes into Hal's room, finding him asleep. But when she tries to approach Joe, he tenses up again, letting out a cry of fear which awakens Hal, who realizes that this outburst may have something to do with the white code forming on Joe's cube. Once he collects his set up from Tsivil's room, Hal rescans Joe's cube to find the code has multiplied. It dawns on Cecie that the memes may have come from David, since Joe's behavior echoes David's fear reactions as Joe described in his narrative of the time he spent with the little Mecha. Having little choice but to leave Joe's cube in the reader overnight, Hal and Cecie move Joe's inert body to the couch. Cecie crawls back to bed, but nightmares of being pursued by mechanoid beasts disturb her sleep, leaving her unrefreshed.....

Scene 18: Sunday night into Monday morning and early afternoon:

While most of the team is asleep, Frank returns, somewhat successful,
from getting rounds for the "Chicago Typewriter" from Cal's contact,
the highly dangerous crime boss Jimmy Moltov -- alive but not
completely unshaken.

In the morning, Monica awakens, still aching from the bruise she got
the day before; Cecie helps ease the pain by way of Reiki, a kind of
healing near-touch, which soothes Monica's aching spirit as well.
Sirus has also completed his work, searching out information on the
Internet about the Chimera, which he burns onto a CD for later
access. Most of the goupr heads out to have breakfast at a neaby
coffee shop, leaving Cecie behind to guard Joe and keep Nicky
company. On returning, Hal replaces Joe's cube after scanning it
overnight; once activated, the Mecha shows no adverse signs of his
terrified outburst the night before.

But unbeknown to the group, someone has been watching them from a
window in a room across the street...

Travelling by rented van, the group heads out to Blackhill
Observatory, high up in the Allegeny Mountains in the north-east
corner of the state, a four hour drive away. Tsivil shares with the
others the webpages Sirus dug up on the Chimera, a strange sentient
virus which has arisen, infecting Mechas and causing havoc wherever
it goes. [Which see at:  http://www.cybcity.com/gigolojoe/crf_mechamyth/crfmechmyth ] Hal finds his skin start to prickle on seeing two symbols
associated with the Chimera. Cecie notices an item about a court case
which her dad prosecuted: People of Massachusetts vs. B1-66-ER, a
service droid who attacked and killed its owners when they tried to
have it permanently shut down, a landmark case which resulted in the
repeal of the MIT Bill of Rights, laws which granted legal rights to
Mechas in the state of Massachusetts. Joe also recognizes one of the
symbols, which causes him to murmur something in Latin, which Frank
interprets, finding it's part of the "Dies Irae", a description of
the Judgement Day.

As they drive through the country, Nicky watches the scenery pass by: the sight of a fox running by the side of the road triggers the
memory of a past dream image, a fox carrying a cat in its mouth,
fleeing from some danger. Monica and Joe help ease the monotony of
travel by reminiscing about David, which helps shorten the long miles
to Blackhill...

Scene 19: Monday afternoon:

At length, the group reaches Blackhill Observatory, up in the
mountains. The long trip through the country has Hal reminiscing --
to himself -- about his last long trip into the countryside, this
time to southern France, after some mysterious strangers had offered
to show him things he never knew about himself and his true
origins... As they enter the observatory, Monica spies a small stray
kitten wandering in the parking lot, dirty, injured and lonely;
moved, she takes the little one in with them. Joe is fascinated with
the small creature, but Cal is less than impressed with the newcomer,
since she has a terrible allergy to cats!

The group starts to settle into the living quarters at the
observatory. Nicky's injured arm is bothering him, so he settles down
to rest in the bunk room. While the others have lunch in the lounge-
like cafeteria, Cal and Monica both clean up, particularly Monica,
who has picked up some of the oil and debris staining the kitten's
fur. Joe also tidies himself up. As Nicky rests, he has another
strange dream, similar to the one he had during the drive to the
observatory, only this time, the fox entreats him to shelter the
white cat it has been trying to protect... Shaken, he awakes and goes
to join the others in the cafeteria.

Once clean and dressed, Monica sets about cleaning up the kitten.
Cecie explores the building, getting a feel for the place. While
exploring the building himself, Joe encounters Sirus, who has been
cleaning one of the public bathrooms, but stops and approaches Joe...
And something passes between them... Something lurking in Sirus
lunges out via microburst and tries to penetrate Joe...

Meanwhile, Hal is taking a shower before he runs another scan on
Joe's cube, but it winds up being rudely interrupted when Frank
sneaks up on him and douses him with a wastebasket of ice-water. Hal
chases Frank out into the hallway, startling Monica. As the two young
men tussle on the floor, Monica gets a glimpse of a large birthmark
on Hal's back, shaped wierdly like an eight-pointed arrow....

Scene 20: Monday mid-to-late afternoon:


Cecie hears Joe's panicked scream in the washroom and she runs to his side to find him all but frozen from whatever passed between him and Sirus. While Monica and Nicky set to work cleaning up Princessa's oil-stained fur -- and finding that the kitty is a male, Monica renames
the little one Hijo de Luna, "Son of the Moon" -- Hal sets to work
rescanning Joe's cube in the observatory's main computer room, where
he and Tsivil stumble over Zachary, one of the astronomers who works
there, who was curled up under his desk waiting for a file to
transfer. On finding that the wierd white code on Joe's cube has
proliferated, Hal decides to counter-code some of the "snow"
collecting on the lattices of Joe's processing paths. But he and
especially Tsivil spot something that shouldn't be there, whatever it
is, as it ghosts in and out. With Cecie keeping watch over Joe, Hal
settles on sealing over the bullet hole in Joe's torso, a relic of
the recent gunfight with the ARM.

In the meantime, Monica heads out for a breath of fresh air,
accompanied by Frank, who is starting to feel the stirrings
of . . .something in his heart, towards her. Tsivil and Zachary try
running a 'Net search on Mecha cortex anomalies, but all they come up
with are the same websites which Sirus found the night before. Hal
decides to run a visual readout of the visual anomalies Joe
manifested on Saturday night.

What Hal sees there -- a nightmare vision of fire and destruction, a
barren landscape dominated by a flaming sigil similar to something on
one of the Chimera sites -- is too horrible even for his hardened
sensibilities. Figuring the image had some preternatural origins,
especially since Mechas don't have hallucinations or visions, and
since Joe's cube was offline at the time the visual anomalies showed
up, Hal goes out to find Frank and Monica -- tapping his own scant
precognizence to aid his search -- to have Frank take a look at the
readout.

Meanwhile, someone approaches the observatory, driving from Rouge
City, tracing the path the group too earlier that day...

While Monica checks on her sleeping kitty, Hal plays back the images
for Frank's benefit, to see if he has any input. Frank recognizes the
strange symbol, since a girl with oracular abilities, whom he once
wrote about, sketched a picture of it. The images leave him so badly
shaken and terrified that when he tries conveying it to Monica, he
breaks down in tears.

By now, the mysterious tracker has reached the observatory and has
entered the public area. Meeting Nicky in the hallway, still feeling
sore after a squabble with Cal, the newcomer introduces herself as
Nadine Bencham, who appears to know about his gift. This spooks
Nicky, so calls up Cal for help. Nadine informs them that she
represents the Army of Bellerophon, an organization whose goal is to
thwart the onslaught of the Chimera, and which has taken an interest
in Joe, wishing to keep him out of the clutches of the CRF and the
ARM.

Hal pauses during his work creating the counter-code to get some
coffee, whereupon he encounters Nadine, and at his end, it's
suspicion at first sight. Cal takes Hal aside and asks him if he
knows anything about this Chimera that keeps being mentioned and what an Oracle has to do with it. Hal gives her his usual cynical take on the whole matter, but suddenly the Mark on his back gets awfully
itchy....

Scene 21: Monday evening

As Frank reads a passage about the mythic Chimera from Cecie's copy
of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "A Wonder Book", Monica lies asleep,
dreaming disturbing dreams of fire and water and some strange beast
calling her "the holy mother". She jolts awake to find Frank at her
side. Hal sends Cecie outside while he finishes patching up the
bullet hole in Joe's torso. Tsivil meets Nadine the newcomer and,
during the course of the exchange between them, when Nadine points
out poorly-defended this location is, Tsivil shows her the old
military bunker hidden below the observatory, its entrance concealed
by a cabinet in the computer room.

Nadine manages to collect the Team and, after retracing the events
that led them here, explains their predicament: that for some reason
the Chimera is drawing a bead on them and that the Army of
Bellerophon, an organization devoted to destroying this entity, is
offering to aide them. Frank and Hal both confirm that the Chimera
has been mentioned in Nicky's nightmare vision and in Joe's odd
murmurings, and also in the visual anomalies Hal found on Joe's cube.
Nadine asks Hal to show them these images; Hal gladly shows them to
the whole group -- on the widescreen. The Planetarium projector to be precise. The images the Team sees -- of fire and horror in a
desolated city -- are enough to send Monica scurrying out to seek
consolation in looking after her kitty... who needs to take care of a
call of nature, so she takes him outside. Frank follows her, offering
her what little comfort he can offer as he leads her back inside, his
heart beginning to swell with love for her. Nadine taps into the
future via the pack of Tarot cards she carries, but the images -- the
Lovers trumped by the Magician -- divined thus offer her no hope...

Suddenly an explosion erupts, rocking the observatory. Frank tries to
quickly assemble the Chicago Typewriter, but he's rusty at it. Cecie,
with Joe at her side, rushes back to the bunkroom to grab her gun and
her sword. Another explosion -- most likely the gas tanks in the
garage -- erupts as Nadine tries to herd the group into the bunker....

END OF AI RP SUMMARY, SCENES 1-25