I finally lost the tail somewhere around the docks, and slowly worked my way into Chiba, watching my back all the way. I dumped the chip in the saddlebag of a bike messenger who almost ran me down in front of the Jarre, figured he'd get a good scare out of a midnight visit from the NSA goons who'd been using it to follow my tracks out of Tokyo. They weren't going to like the way I rearranged the facial features of their buddy who tried to waylay me outside of the pachinko parlor. One last glance behind me, and I ducked into the Chatsubo. She was waiting for me there, a vision of pure lust in a red mini-dress with cleavage all the way down to her waist and legs all the way down to the floor. I tried to stay casual as I sauntered over to the bar next to her. "Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred," I said to Ratz, the regular bartender. Ratz slammed the drink down on the counter in front of me. "Shaken enough for you, Dick?" he said. "Dick. Nice name." She had a voice that sounded like wind blowing through pine trees on a hot summer night. Low. Breathy. Wet. "He's being an asshole. Dick's American slang for a PI. Mind if I join you?" "Suit yourself." I pulled up a stool, surreptitiously slipping her PGP signature into my PDA. It checked out. Good. Now if she just had the merchandise. I hadn't come 5,000 miles just to check out her pectoral development. I leaned over close, trying not to stare at that pair of 38Ds. "You got anything else you'd like to show me?" Her emerald green eyes bored into mine, and then slowly dropped down to the level of my zipper. She slowly slid the hem of her dress up her creamy thigh, just high enough so that I could see that she wasn't wearing any panties. And there it was. Tucked into the top of her silk stocking, just next to the black lace garter. "That floppy's got the source to Declan McCullagh and Ian Goldberg's crack of the Surfwatch database. Worth a small fortune to anyone with the cojones to spam a sample to K12." She licked her lips like she was getting ready to go down on a double dip of Cherry Garcia. "Would you like to come up to my room and take a closer look?" (OK, Nobody, knock it off. You got rid of Tim May three paragraphs ago. Let's get on with it, huh?) (Shit, boss, just trying to have a little fun ... ) THE CYPHERPUNK ENQUIRER "Encyphering minds want to know." Fresh on the heels of the Chicago Bull's triumph in the NBA finals, Michael Jordan has announced the release of his new signature Internet encryption product, Michael Jordan's Awfully Good Snake Oil. Based on a tried and tested but proprietary algorithm, AGSO is guaranteed to provide superior 40 bit encryption of all important Internet traffic. Michael himself personally guarantees that AGSO will integrate perfectly with the Eudora mailer, and used no 14 year old Nicaraguan programmers like that inferior Kathy Lee Gifford shit, and no feminine frou-frou like with Liz Taylor's Black Perl. Jim Bell was injured today when a mail exploder went off in his hands. Doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital reported that the mail exploder had been upgraded from critical to stable condition and was resting comfortably in a private room. After a visit from fellow patient Louis Freeh, the mail exploder commented, "It's surprising how well he's learned to talk through that proctoscope." Matt Blaze has finally come clean, and agreed to provide a partial transcript of the NSA's famous "If you knew what we know, you'd support key escrow" presentation, which according to Mr. Blaze starts out, "If you knew about the video tapes we have of you with that 16 year old blonde at the Motel Six ... " Due to continuing controversy over the Michael Jackson case, and bowing to extreme election year pressure from the religious right, President Clinton today announced a new policy to prevent child abuse in the music industry. The Rock Musicians Penis Escrow Bill would require all musicians selling more than 10,000 CDs to file photographs of their (presumably tumescent) genitals with the FBI so that they could be examined and identified in the event of accusations of lascivious behavior with minors. Leon Panetta was reportedly flying to Chicago for discussions with the presently retired Plaster Casters, hoping to garner their support for the bill, while the Wall Street Journal announced an investigation into rumors that Chelsea has a standing request with the FBI for multiple copies. The Libertarian Party immediately announced its whole-hearted support for the plan after Jim Ray snuck the plank into the party platform when no one was looking. Tim May's experimental plan to reduce the noise level on the Cypherpunk Mailing List was declared a resounding success after massive doses of Ritalin actually caused Perry Metzger to apologize for flaming a clueless AOLer. In related news, AwakenToMe has finally figured out protected mode, and has announced the first Pentium condom that actually fits over the cooling fan. Sameer Parkesh announced that c2.org is now hosting an "Unanimizer" web browser, which makes web servers think that the entire population of the WhoWhere search engine has just accessed their pages. Next in the Enquirer: Bob Dole on the dangers of the abacus virus.