"Come on, Trevor, lend us your chip, will ya?" 

Trevor turned his back on Luyellen and folded his arms across his chest. "No." 

"Awe, come on," Luyellen begged, a high whine affecting his voice. "I'll even let you play half the game. Please, my memory credit is bust. Please, Trevor, be a buddy, will ya?" 

Trevor turned about and faced Luyellen, his chubby features flushing with colour. "What happens when I need the memory for school?" 

"I'll get it charged at Mum's work. Promise." Luyellen almost got down on his knees. 

"You promise to re-charge it?" 

"Yeah, and I'll even let you go first." Luyellen's smile split his chubby face like a cut through congealed fat. 

Trevor put his hand in his chip pouch to get a disc for the machine. He hesitated. "I don't know how to play it." 

"Then I'll go first and you follow what I do. Okay?" Luyellen's excitement gave his gelatinous body the shakes, causing his bright, metal weave shirt to shimmer. 

Trevor stopped, the disc chip half extended toward Luyellen. "You won't rip me?" 

"I won't rip you. Trust me." His smile was far from convincing. 

"Right." Trevor handed over the chip and they stepped up to the booth that was set back into the wall of the sensu-media hall. "Where did you learn about this thing?" 

Trevor noted Luyellen' blush. "I just got this feelin' as we walked past the door." 

Trust me, Trevor replayed through his mind, feeling the pangs of deceit tug at his insides. "What kind of name's `Who'll Stop The Rain' for a game anyway?" Trevor asked, looking over his friend's shoulder as he inserted the chip and called up the Holo booths menu. 

"They give these things strange names just so us kids'll play `em. It don't mean nothin.'" 

The Holo came to life, the scene was a room, sparse, alien. "Not another space game!" Trevor grunted. He hated space games, they were too everyday to be any fun. 

"Wait, it's only loading the scene," Luyellen hissed, annoyance slurring his words. 

The room shifted and changed until it revealed an expansive, domed ceiling on top of a brushed, metallic-walled room. Engravings in a language similar to that of the KKRell graced the walls. 

"Great, it's a cypher," Trevor grunted. "I hate cyphers." 

"Shut up, Trevor, it's not a cypher." Luyellen smiled as the menu flashed on the small screen he held in his hands. "It's a Creationist." 

Trevor stared at the screen. The menu had a list of names, idea and setting selections. "Never heard of it," he said, trying to disguise his interest. 

Luyellen turned to him, his face glowing with excitement. "These things are banned, Trevor." 

"What!" 

"Keep it down." Luyellen hit the booth door seal so that no one could hear them. "I read on the net that Creationist machines had been banned because they caused strange things to happen." 

"Shit, Luyellen! I'm not messing with no banned Holo. I got a VR gene splicing paper due in on Tuesday." 

Luyellen frowned. "What?" 

"I'm going home, and if I were you I'd report this thing to the Legals." 

"Wait, we haven't even started the game yet. What about the chip?" Luyellen grabbed Trevor by the arm, a pleading expression washed through his small brown eyes. "Please let's play it. If it gets weird we'll pull the chip. Please?" 

Trevor looked at the Holo room with its alien features, he picked up the menu screen and thumbed through the commands. "Okay. But as soon as it gets weird we're out of here." 

Luyellen grabbed the screen and sat down on the bench in the middle of the booth. "Sure, Trevor, no problem." 

Luyellen's smile frightened Trevor, his enthusiasm was far too great, too eager. 

"Which character should we bring in first. Harvey or Hi Ling? The alien or the diplomat?" 

"I don't know, I don't know anything about this." Trevor's head hurt, the booth felt strange, odd. "All we do is add life forms to the scene, create some problems for them to solve and when they get near to solving them we add other characters to the plot to make things harder. We create life and then we make it hard for it to live. Fun, heh?" 

"How do you know all this?" Trevor felt a tightness in his stomach. 

"I...I...just do." Luyellen' voice was soft, strained. "I feel as if I've...played this thing before." 

"Stop shittin' me, Luyellen, I hate it when you mess about with serious stuff." Trevor wanted to punch the little fat kid. He was scared enough as it was without his fooling about. 

"How about I mesh the two forms?" Luyellen thumbed the two character icons at the same time. <<UNSTABLE CONSTRUCT>> flashed on the screen. 

<< CONTINUE / ABORT >> 

"Abort it." 

Luyellen laughed as he hit the C. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." 

The Holo booth made a squealing noise as a figure appeared in the room. "Yuck!" Trevor gasped. The image was of a lizard thing the height of a man and it was wearing a suit. "How come it's got a suit on?" he asked, not knowing what else to say. 

"It's a lounge suit," Luyellen spat. His voice didn't sound right. "Harvey would have been the one wearing the suit, he's the diplomat. The lizard thing's the alien. Makes sense to me." 

Trevor wanted to pull the chip but hesitated. "What does the screen call it?"

"It's even meshed the two names together." Luyellen laughed. "Its called it Harling." 

The Holo creature turned and smiled at the two boys, its double row of sharp pointed teeth glistened with saliva. "Welcome, Trevellen. I see you have understood." 

"Who's Trevellen? That name's not on the character list." Trevor went for the screen but Luyellen shoved him back against the wall. 

"We are Trevellen, we are to be melded as one." Luyellen's eyes sparkled with something evil, bad. 

"Time to pull the chip, things are getting weird." Trevor reached down to the control box. 

"It is too late, my little Organos," Harling snarled. "I am now here and soon others will come. Others will be created through the suggestions of our will: our games" 

Luyellen grabbed Trevor's arm and pulled him back from the control box. "Pull the chip, Luyellen! Pull the chip!" Trevor yelled into his face. 

Harling stepped up to them, it's breath was hot, spiced. Real. 

"No!" Trevor screamed. "You're a Holo." 

The green lizard swung its great clawed arm at Luyellen. The sickening thud and crack of bone pushed Trevor's mind to the edge of fainting and smashed Luyellen off the bench and onto the floor. He didn't even cry out. 

"Now there is only you and me, Trevellen. Me and a Organo, how ironic. It was you Organos who created us in the first place." 

"Who...who...are ..you?" Trevor cried, tears filled and leapt from his eyes. "It's only a game," he sobbed. 

"It is creation, Organo!" Harling snatched the menu screen from Luyellen's limp hand. "Time for the rains to begin." It touched the control pad and the glass dome showed the sky filled with billowing black clouds and thick, yellow rain began to fall. 

"No...no...no..." Trevor sobbed, shaking his head. "Its only a game, its only a game." 

"Soon, Trevellen, everything will be ours and you Organos will do our bidding." Harling licked its thin lips, a thick green tongue played over pointed, white teeth. 

Trevor sucked in several wet breaths and moved around the lizard to the control box. Pull the chip, that's all I have to do, pull the chip. His mind begged as much as it commanded. 

Harling smiled. "Already there is another birth. Watssson and Kya hunnna, the meld is sssstrong." It hissed as it turned on Trevor. "More are coming, Organo." A look of ecstasy appeared to crease its scaled face. 

"I'm not a Organo!" Trevor cried. "I'm a human and...and I don't know what you are." 

"You are a Organo, Trevellen, you are a creation much like me but your creator has departed where my/our creator stands before us. I am a melding as you will soon become. I am the pollution of genetic tampering and electronic bastardry."    "You are a Holo, a game, and I'm just a scared kid," Trevor shouted, as he dived for the control box. His fingers slid off the chip with the first grab, but the second snatch wrenched the chip from the slot, the booth plunged into blackness. He lay there listening, feeling the wet warmth of pee in his pants as fear released its control. In the darkness he could hear the slow steady breathing of someone. "Luyellen!" he whispered. A stirring, a rustling as something moved across the floor. "Luyellen is that you?" 

"What happened?" Luyellen's voice sounded tired. 

"I don't know, things went weird...I got scared...things..." 

Light spilled in to the darkness as the booth's door slid open. Gripping on to the door jam was Luyellen, his face white, pale. "Let's get out of here," he hissed, his voice light and airy. 

Trevor stood up, pocketed the chip and stepped toward the door. "Ah...ah... I've peed myself." 

Luyellen managed a dull laugh. "Pity I passed out, it would have been good to see you scared." 

Trevor looked about the booth and saw nothing but its dull grey walls, the control box, the bench and the menu screen sitting on the bench. "I know why this thing was banned," he said, exiting the booth to stand beside Luyellen in the deserted sensu-hall. "Damn things running reality software and bloody biological hardware I bet." 

"Boys," called a tall, thin man, coming up behind them. 

Luyellen sat on the ground, his head in his hands. 

"Is your friend unwell?" he asked. 

"He is just tired," Trevor replied, feeling a strange sensation wash over him. 

"Let me introduce myself. I am Whatahuna and I represent the company that built this machine," he smiled, revealing two very close sets of rounded teeth. 

"Harling!" Trevor gasped. 

"Oh you have met my partner already," the man said. "Then you wouldn't mind taking this chip as a token of our thanks for playing the game." 

Luyellen groaned, but didn't lift his face from his hands. 

Whatahuna handed Trevor the chip and winked. 

"Wait!" Trevor said. Compulsion pulled him back into the booth. He slipped the new chip into the control box and stepped back. 

The room filled with the scene of the domed room, the sky was filled with raining black clouds. Harling grabbed him from behind in two strong, sharp clawed hands. 

"You see, Organo. Once you have created it is impossible to reverse the process." Harling stepped past Trevor to stand facing him a few metres away. It pulled a thin dagger from within its clothing and sliced the blade across the back of its hand. "You see, Organo, life, existence is really only a mind concept, a creation of an advanced programme." Harling licked at the red ooze that flowed from the wound and exhaled in exhaultation. "Ah, concepts are just like games, Trevellen." It sighed. Harling turned and spat a gob of red into Trevor's face. "And this game is called Creation." 

Trevor coughed and fell backwards against the wall, his hands pulling at the ooze on his face. "Please don't hurt me I...I..." He felt a heaviness pull him to the floor and the sound of another voice joined a chorus in his mind, the voice of Luyellen. Pain tore at his mind, pulled at his insides. Someone was trying to put him on like a second set of clothes. 

"You are now Trevellen, no longer a Organo." Harling's voice crashed like waves over rocks. "Come, we have more to meld before this life is done." Harling marched from the booth. 

Trevor/Luyellen struggled to his feet. He felt heavy, he felt...felt like he was two people at the same time. "What has happened to Luyellen?" he asked, but knew the answer before the last word left his lips. I am he and he is me. 

Harling waited with Whatahuna by the exit of the sensu- hall. Where Luyellen had sat on the floor was now a wet stain, a brown puddle of waste. "Come, Trevellen, we have many places to go." 

Trevellen stepped out into the dull gloom of a winter's day. 

"In less than a year the skies will be the scene you saw in the booth, Trevellen, the acid rain will come and cleanse the Earth of its disease, its singularity of life." 

Trevellen looked up at the sky with its dripping water clouds. "Then who'll stop the rain?"