Cyberpunk (2 page)

cargo doors are open and seven little ‘nauts are out, spinning on their

head buckets.

Okay, it’s true morning, at last, official. No avoiding it any longer. I

roll over onto my back, flip the pillow off my face, hear it land

somewhere with a
flumpf
but it doesn’t sound like it’s hit anything

breakable. I brush the hair back from my face again, take a deep breath:

standard morning smells are percolating up the stairs. De-licious hot

microwaved plastic. Yummy bitter fresh-brewed caffix. True inspiring

yeasty reek of irradiated sugar-glazed pastryoid. I sit up in bed, yawn,

open both eyes at the same time, and finally, turn to my desk.

MoJo is black, silent. Dead.

In a nano I’m total awake. Covers fly everywhere as I roll off the

bed, hit the floor barefoot, kick aside the dirty clothes and bounce to my

desk. Already in my head I’m pleading as my fingers zip over the cables,

testing, tugging, tweaking.
Geez, don’t let this be the Sikh Ambush virus

again
! I’m just about to crack open MoJo’s CityLink box when I flag the

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Gyoja Gerbil is tottering, vague and dim, across the flatscreen. He turns

slow, mouths some silent words, then bows deep and whacks the gong

with his walking stick. No sound. A faint, dark dialog box pops open and

my morning news start to scroll in, utter quiet and almost unreadable.

Oh. That’s right; I forgot. I was up late last night, studying Death

Cannon coordinates F0/140/ A22 15FF—Meghan Gianelli’s bedroom

window—and I turned the sound and contrast way down. Sighing relief,

I spin them back up to normal, plop down in my chair, and re-exec the

boot script.

The Gyoja Gerbil winks out a mo, winks back in, and bows again.

“Good morning, Mikhail Harris,” he starts over. Inward, I shudder. Only

Mom and my Miko-Gyoja 260/0/ /ex still call me Mikhail. Mom I can’t do

anything about, but one of these days me and Georgie are going to
have

to reburn the boot ROMs and grease the gerbil.

“Now checking CityNet mail for you,” the Gyoja says. He closes his

eyes, like he’s concentrating; I bite my lip and tough it out. Just six more

ROM commands to execute before the rodent surrenders control. Just six

more, unless...

The Gyoja Gerbil frowns, freezes. A flashing red-border dialog box

pops open; a hardware interrupt, generated by the CityLink deep security

program.
Warning!
it says.
Possible buffer contamination!
I acknol the

alert, bang into the hex monitor, dump out the contents of the flytrap and

look it over.

No big deal. Two Dark Avenger viruses, one Holland Girl, an idiotsimple

Gobbler and a mess of raw data that’s probably an adfax that got

sent to me by mistake. Typical CityNet wildlife. For a mo, I hesitate.

Maybe...?

Nah. Nice that the rodent was interrupted, but I don’t dare try to

look for a way around him with a copy of Dark Avenger in the CityLink.

I flush the buffer, and a nano later the Gyoja has seized control again.

“Now checking CityNet mail for you,” he says.

Huh? That’s odd. The samurai rat doesn’t repeat himself, usual. I

lean close, watch real careful.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

“I have found these messages waiting for you, Honorable Harrissan,”

he says, and he opens a window between his hands like he’s

pulling open a scroll. I start to read the first line.

The top of the window slips out of the gerbil’s grip, slams shut on

his right hand. Arterial blood jets bright red as little hairy fingers are

lopped off neat, go tumbling down to the bottom of the screen.

What?

“Now checking CityNet mail for you,” he says again, then freezes.

Jerks back to the start. “Now checking—” Freeze. Restart. “Now ch—”

Freeze.

I pounce on the keyboard, start banging out interrupts. Oh no, it
is

the Sikh Ambush virus!
Break
. Nothing.
Ctrl-C
. Nothing.
Option E
.

Nothing.

“Now—,” he starts. Freeze.

Ctrl-Alt-right fist
.

“Ch--ch--ch--”

Desperate and frantic, I take a deep breath, then stab my thumb

down on the warmstart reboot button. The Gyoja Gerbil’s head explodes,

blood and brains and teeth spraying truly gross all over the flatscreen.

Golly. It’s never done
that
before.

Feeling just a little stunned, I sag back in my chair, put my chin in

my left hand, and start wondering just what the Hell kind of virus I

picked up this time. And why my flytrap didn’t catch it. And what it’s

going to do to MoJo. I don’t have to wonder for long; two little cartoon

men in white uniforms—nobody out of any of
my
programs, I’m sure—

shuffle out onto the screen, one pushing a garbage can on squeaky

wheels, the other carrying a big shovel. They stop, shake their heads and

tsk-tsk at the mess, then shovel what’s left of the gerbil into the trash can

and amble off. The flatscreen blanks.

I give it five seconds. Ten seconds. I’m reaching for the manual

reset button when a new character darts out onto the screen. This one’s a

robopunk—a real techno looking ‘bot with a blue chrome mohawk—and

he stops centerscreen, looks around furtive, then whips out a can of

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

spray paint and leaves me a hot green message:

CRACKERS BUDDY-BOO 8ER

Oh, shiite.

The ‘bot vanishes. The message hangs there a mo, doing the slow

fade. “Damn,” I say, quiet. Then a little more aggressive. “Damn!” I

look around as if afraid someone’s looking over my shoulder, turn back

to MoJo, and kick the leg of my desk. “Oh,
damn!
” The message

finishes its fade and I jerk into action, bouncing up out of my chair,

punching power switches, yanking cables. CityLink box switched off

and unplugged. NetLine yanked, on both ends. HouseFiber unplugged.

“Damn, damn, damn!” I hesitate a mo over MoJo’s master power

switch. It’s been almost two years since the last time I shut him off utter

cold.

I scowl, and hit the switch. Then I yank the power cord for good

measure.

It wasn’t a virus, it was a message from Rayno. He caught

somebody else poking around in OurNet. And if that’s true/true, I’m in

trouble so deep I need a snorkel.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 0/ 1

Soon as I’d finished with the total disconnect, I tore off my cosmojammies

and threw them in the corner, grabbed my blue spatterzag

jumpsuit off the floor and zipped it on, then dug out my blitz yellow

hightops from under the bed and laced them up loose. Subroutining off

to the bathroom for a mo to flush my bladder buffer and run a brush

across my teeth, I popped back into my bedroom, threw my video slate

and a couple textbook ROMs into my backpack, and hit the stairs flying.

Mom and Dad were still at breakfast when I bounced into the

kitchen. “Good Morning, Mikhail,” said Mom with a smile. “You were

up so late last night I thought I wouldn’t see you before you caught your

tram.”

“Had a tough program to crack,” I lied.

“Well,” she said, “now you can sit down and have a decent

breakfast.” She turned around to pull another pod of steaming

muffinoids out of the microwave and slap them down on the table.

“If you’d do your schoolwork when you’re supposed to, you

wouldn’t have to cram at the end of the semester,” Dad growled from

behind his caffix and faxsheet. I sloshed some juice in a plastic glass,

gulped it down, and started for the door.

“What?” Mom asked. “That’s all the breakfast you’re going to

have?”

“Haven’t got time,” I said. “Gotta get to school early to see if the

program checks.” Bobbing around her, I faked a dribble, lobbed the

empty glass into the sink. Two points.

She looked at me, shook her head, and took a slow step forward like

she was going to block me. “You’re not going to school dressed like

that, I hope?”

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

“Aw,
Mom
.” Ducking back around the table, I grabbed a muffin—

rice bran, sawdust and rabbit raisin, I think.

“I mean, look at you, you’re nothing but a mass of wrinkles. Where

did you find that jumpsuit anyway, in the laundry hamper?”

“No, Mom.” Faking a step back towards the hall door, I stuffed the

muffin into my backpack and velcroed the pouch.

She followed the feint. “And what about your hair? I don’t mind if

you wear it long, but honestly Mikhail, it looks like there’s something

nesting
in it.”

Dad lowered his faxsheet long enough to peer over the top edge.

“Kid needs a flea bath and a haircut, if you ask me.” Oh,
perfect
, Dad.

Just the exact reaction I wanted. That’s why I
got
the horsemane style!

Mom turned on Dad and spoke to quiet him—ragging on me before

school is
her
job—but I didn’t hear the rest ‘cause I’d seen my opening,

taken it, and was already out the door and halfway across the porch.

“Don’t forget to boot Muffy!” Mom yelled after me.

Hand on the outside doorknob, I stopped, turned around. “Yes,

mother.” Taking a quick scan around, I spotted Mom’s Mutt lying in the

corner, curled up around the battery charger. Oh, I wanted to
boot
that

dog all right! But then, foot cocked, I remembered Muffy was a lot

heavier than it looked and decided I didn’t need the pain. So I bent over,

lifted the dog’s stubby little tail, and unplugged the power feed.

“Arf,” Muffy said. It stood up and began twitching through its servo

diagnostics. I gave the charger cord a sharp yank, watched it retract.

“Arf,” Muffy said again, and it began toddling towards the kitchen. I

turned around, gave one last fleeting thought to the cheery mind image

of Muffy being drop-kicked into the mock oranges, and then zipped out

the door.

I caught the transys for school, just in case Mom and Dad were

watching. Two blocks down the line I got off and caught the northbound

tram, and then I started off on a big loop that kept me off the routes

Mom and Dad used to get to work and took me back past home and in

the complete opposite direction from school. Half an hour and six

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

transfers later I came whipping into Buddy’s All-Nite Burgers. Rayno

was sitting in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was0/
7:55:23
and I’d

beat Georgie and Lisa there.

“What’s on line?” I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from

Rayno. He just looked up at me, eyes piercing blue through his fine,

white-blond eyebrows, and I knew better than to ask again.

I sat down. I shut up. Whatever it was had to be
important
, to make