#### N30N C1RCUS: The Scruffy Kid's Lucky Day  
  
A slap echoed down the alley..  
  
_"Gimme dose! Where'd ya get 'em anyway?"_  
_"Traded for 'em, honest, I did"_, came the sniffled reply.  
  
The goon made to move off down the darkened street, then stopped, thought, and tossed a couple of bits of scrap back at the small figure hunched against the crate.  
  
_"So did I"_ he rasped and walked away, tossing his newly acquired _'cores_ from hand to hand.  
  
The scruffy kid looked at the rusty bits of scrap that weren't even going to buy a dumpster bagel. Yet another hungry day in paradise.  
  
Hunched despondently in the corner the crate made against the wall, he was trying to find the energy to move when a quiet scrape of cloth startled him into that hyper-alertness that meant survival here. He was staring apprehensively into the night, wondering just how much worse it was going to get, when two dully luminous AI cubes silently arced out of the dark to land near his hand. Instinctively he reached out to grab and just as instinctively snatched his hand back, expecting the worst. A quiet whisper out of the darkness:  
  
_"Take them. They're yours"_  
  
The kid looked around - there was a darker shadow against the wall. Maybe? From further away down the street, a _'blam'_ echoed out of the darkness, followed by another and then silence. A tension seemed to ease out of the shadow and another almost inaudible whisper:  
  
_"Sounds like your business associate ran into Worzel"_  
  
As the shadow detached itself from the wall and started away the kid called out:  
  
_"Mister, wait.."_ and held out the two pieces of scrap.  
  
The whisper again, this time with the ghost of a smile:  
  
_"Seems like a fair deal to me"_  
_"Mister, what's a worzel?"_  
  
But there wasn't anything or anybody there to answer.  
