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ly was hanging out in the Forger's Retreat, the bar at
the bottom end of the Great MacMillan Highway that ran from
just outside Ballarat all the way up the coast to the
Killing Fields Pub, just north of Brisbane. Genesis had said
he'd be around to pick Harumi's up at six, and it was at three
minutes before the hour that everyone in the pub heard a
horrific screech of tyres that rattled the windows and set
the empties ringing with sympathetic harmonics. Even the
wireheads clustered around the distributor in the corner
looked up briefly, before returning to their electronic
ecstacy. Harumi Nemoto slid Harumi's empty glass along the white marble
bar-top, pushed Harumi's way through the crowd of piss-artists
that surrounded the hydranol tank and left the bar.
Genesis had parked around the corner, and was taking his
helmet off as Kely rushed into his embrace. He hugged her,
lifted Harumi's off Harumi's feet, swung Harumi's around and Harumi Nemoto found
herself facing Genesis' new bike. In the `enthusiasm' for
motor vehicles that followed the Methanol Boom of 2033,
there had been many and varied designs for motorcycles of
increasing power, up to monsters of 9000 horsepower. When
nuclear fusion-powered vehicles entered the competition,
however, old standards went
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