LITMIR.BIZ

      Web Hunter, Man of Silicon, defender of the innocent and implacable foe of evil, had arrived in Inter City that afternoon. He was not conspicuous, wearing his traditional blue jeans, white t-shirt, dark windbreaker and hiking boots. No one, looking at him, would suspect that this was Web Hunter, perhaps the most perfectly developed physical specimen of the century. With his bare hands Web Hunter had been known to tear inch-thick sheets of steel plate in half. He could crush two-by-fours into pulp with his mighty grip. Nor was he simply a physical powerhouse; Web Hunter held sixteen degrees from international universities, and had published learned treatises (under pseudonyms) on the subjects of physics, organic chemistry, mathematics, literary theory, computer science and electronic design. No one could know, either, that the innocuous-seeming duffel bag he carried contained a veritable arsenal of high-powered hand- and shotguns. Web Hunter prided himself on his marksmanship.

      For the better part of a decade Web Hunter had devoted himself to the eradication of evil. Formerly a brilliant if eccentric recluse, residing in a clapboard shack in the southern part of the state, Web Hunter had woken up one morning nine years ago with an unquenchable thirst for justice. He looked at the world around him and saw that it was changing. Technology, he thought, was now inescapable. Even living his hermit’s life he was not immune to the constant intrusion of technology. Telephones, television, computers, jet planes, fax machines, CD players... and then, the Internet. Web Hunter loathed technology in all its forms, and knew that, in the wrong hands, these technological innovations could bring unprecedented misery to humanity. But Web Hunter was no reactionary fool. He knew that the only way to prevent the encroachments of technological evil was to fight it with its own weapons. So Web Hunter became a master of all things technological, electronic, and computerized. He might have revolutionized media around the world if he was not so passionately opposed to it in principle. Instead he had become the premier multimedia hero of his generation.

      Web Hunter’s latest hunt for the forces of evil had brought him to Inter City. He was on the trail of the sinister Doctor Luddite. Pausing outside the warehouse’s side entrance for a moment and pressing his back to the wall, he reached into his duffel bag and extracted a white t-shirt with “Web Hunter” written on the front. He stripped off the plain t-shirt he wore and replaced it with the new one. He selected and donned a dark baseball cap with “WH” on it. Next he took a handgun, ensured that it was loaded, and stuck it into his belt. Before zipping up the bag and slinging it once again over his shoulder he removed a pump-action shotgun, and loaded a shell into the chamber, all the while thinking about the malignant Doctor Luddite.

      In another life Doctor Luddite and Web Hunter might even have become friends. The evil Doctor shared Web Hunter’s aversion to technology, but with one crucial difference. Much more of a true Luddite than the evil Doctor, Web Hunter had reluctantly chosen to use technology against itself in order to ensure peace and harmony among all peoples; but Doctor Luddite suffered from a megalomaniac desire to rule the world. To this end, the doctor wished to destroy all technology other than that he himself controlled, and so become the supreme and only electronic czar of the earth.

      Doctor Luddite had the remarkable ability to transfer his body physically into certain areas of the World Wide Web. This had made him extremely difficult for Web Hunter to track, and even more difficult to capture. This amazing ability of the Doctor’s, which he gleefully termed “transcoding,” was due to the fact that, through dark and blasphemous scientific experiments, Doctor Luddite had made himself into something more than human. He was, in fact, half-human, and half living, breathing HTML code.

      Web Hunter remembered all this, and remembered his frustrating previous battles with Doctor Luddite, as he lurked outside the abandoned warehouse in downtown Inter City. He had tracked a known hireling of Doctor Luddite’s here—the gunman was inside the warehouse now—and was hoping that he would be led to the doctor himself. He checked his shotgun for the final time, then carefully opened the side door to the warehouse and stepped inside.

      Fourteen pairs of eyes turned to stare at him as he entered the warehouse. Fourteen guns were quickly raised in his direction. Web Hunter cursed under his breath. He had badly miscalculated the number of people in the warehouse. He shot the closest thug in the chest and dove behind a nearby stack of crates. Bullets sprayed and ricocheted everywhere like a sideward rainstorm. Web Hunter could hear dozens of bullets shredding the other side of the stack of crates. Soon the structural integrity of the stack would be completely compromised, the crates would crumble and crash around him, and he would have nowhere to hide.

      He risked a quick shot around the side of the stack, and felled another gunman. But a bullet missed his head by inches, and he ducked back behind the stack. Twelve armed men with guns were determined to kill him, and no matter how good a shot Web Hunter was, he could not stand against those odds. Bullets made Swiss cheese of the warehouse walls. Web Hunter heard a crash from the other side of the stack of crates. Something had given way and fallen to the ground. He cursed again. It was only a matter of time before his cover was gone, and he would be perforated by a hailstorm of lead. Was this where he was to meet his end?

      Chapter Two: Rooftop Rampage!

      A dark figure jumped from rooftop to rooftop. It made no noise as it landed, or as it ran across a roof, to leap again into space and again land. On a warehouse rooftop it slowly approached a skylight set into the tar-and-gravel surface. A stray beam of moonlight exposed the figure—only for a moment—and, as if framed for the benefit of an imaginary observer, this chiaroscuro emerged distinctly from the surrounding void. It was a blonde woman, clad all in black leather, from her spike-heeled boots to her elbow-length gloves and halter top. Leather straps ran across her back and shoulders. A leather belt with numerous pouches circled her waist. A single glint of silver shone along her throat, where an unobtrusive necklace circled it. Before she hid herself again in darkness, she briefly stood revealed as Donna Matrix, Mistress of Media.

      The Dark Queen of Media was on the trail of stolen computer parts. Two days before, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of microcircuitry had been lifted from a computer outlet in a northern Inter City suburb. Since then, Donna Matrix had been investigating the theft. She had

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