Cyberpunk (16 page)

of the field, up along a row of identical ugly green prefab bunkhouses,

eventual coming to a stop in front of one. Which was good, ‘cause by

then Scott was starting to make with little robot ‘boop’ and ‘beep’ noises

and Payne looked like he was getting suspicious. Payne called out

“Column halt!” and we sort of piled to a stop. He yelled “Ten-
shun
!”

and we all snapped to. He clasped hands behind his back and walked

down the line slow, looking us over with a cold, unreadable glare. At the

end of the line he turned around, stopped. Took a deep breath.

“Welcome to the Von Schlager Military Academy!” he boomed out.

“As of this second, your old life is over! I don’t care who you were

yesterday, or what you did before you came here! Starting right now,

you are Serial Two-Oh-Three! You are a
team
! And in the next twelve

weeks we are going to teach you a little bit about what it means to be a

team of
men
!” He paused, looked down, bit his lower lip.

“This bunkhouse is your new home! Bunks and bedding are inside,

as are cleaning supplies. It is up to
you
to make Serial Two-Oh-Three’s

bunkhouse spotless! Inspection will be at sixteen hundred hours, with

official orientation to begin immediately thereafter!” He paused again,

took another deep breath.

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“So tell me,
who are you
?”

A couple of us started to mumble our discrete names, but all the

jarheads together yelled out, “Serial Two-Oh-Three!”

“What’s that?”

A little better sync this time. “Serial Two-Oh-Three.”

“I can’t hear you!”

Geez, even
I
joined in. “
Serial Two-Oh-Three
!”

Payne leaned back a little, grinned or maybe bared his teeth, cracked

off a salute like a karate chop. “Dis
mist
!” Pivoting on a heel, he turned

and marched away. The jarheads broke into a mad scramble for the

bunkhouse door.

Me and Scott sagged, turned slow, looked at each other with big

dumb surprise playing all over our faces. “That’s it?” I said, all total

amazement. “We’re free?”
Okay Mikey, at last, some space to think!

Let’s start working on the escape plan!

Step one: Get my Starfire back, and find an open node, and jack in,

and... and
what
? Just where the Hell
am
I, anyway?

Step one, revised: Figure out which trail leads out to the highway,

and...

I looked around the field. Trees. Tall pine trees, stretching on

forever. Underbrush like a thick green wall, coming right up to the edge

of the Academy.

Right. Step one, rev 3.0/ : Find a road, or trail, or
something
.

I was still hacking through permutations on step one when the light

bulb flashed on over Scott’s head.

“
Bunk beds
!”

Shiite! He took off running; I followed, but too late. By the time we

figured out there was a back door and went around that way, all the

bottom bunks were taken, and most of the top ones, too. Scott wound up

with an upper bunk over by the back windows—well, they weren’t

windows, really; more like big rectangular holes in the walls, with

mosquito netting on the inside and heavy wooden shutters on the

outside, propped open with sticks—and I got the upper bunk just inside

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the front door, right over some sullen, silent guy with an oily dark

complexion and a big nose. There was this major notch in the bunk

frame where the door hit every time it swung open.

That was the least of my problems. Fact is, calling that thing a bed

was pure pravda. Torture rack, more likely; made out of slick greenpainted

two-by-fours; slapped together with big Frankenstein-type bolt

heads sticking out all over; no spring, no mattress, no
nothing
, just a flat

plywood slab with little wood rails around the edges to keep me from

falling out. I climbed up, sat on the bunk with my feet dangling over the

side, scanned around to see what the other kids were doing.

Okay, the lumpy green thing squatting at the other end wasn’t a

pillow, it was an anorexic futon. I unrolled it. The true pillows (green

again) were all piled on some shelves down at the far end of the

bunkhouse, next to a stack of (green) blankets and a mountain of

(surprise!) white sheets. A bunch of the jarheads, being instinctive good

little worker ants, were already starting up a distribution chain.

Fine. I could use sheets and a blanket. But when Deke Luger came

over with a mop in his hands and a big, dumb grin on his freckled face...

“Yo! Cyberpunk! Y’all know how to
interface
with one of these?”

He threw the mop to me two-handed, like it was a gun. Reflexive, I

caught it.

One of Deke’s buddies brought over the bucket and jumped in on

the fun. “Careful y’all don’t get splinters up your butt when you
jack

in
!” He started laughing and hooting like it was the funniest joke in the

entire history of the known universe. That got everybody in the

bunkhouse looking our way.

Deke kicked the frame of the lower bunk. “An’
you
, y’lazy

greaseball! Juan, or Ree-
car
-do, or whatever th’ Hell your--”

“My name,” the guy in the lower bunk said in a raw, angry voice, “is

Lawrence Borec, dipshit.”

Deke grinned even dumber and wider. “Is that th’ Charleston Borec-

Dipshits or th’ Raleigh Borec-Dip—

WHAM! Borec sort of
uncoiled
off the bunk and went headfirst into

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Deke’s midsection. Luger staggered back and tried to swing a wild

punch; Borec clamped arms around Luger’s waist, hooked a foot behind

his leg, and threw him down. A nano later they were rolling across the

wood floor, cussing and clawing, kicking dust up to hang dancing in the

slanty afternoon sunlight. Somebody screamed, “Fight! Fight!”

Everybody in the bunkhouse came charging over to see.

Luger rolled face up. He got his right hand free, got in a couple

short, hard punches on Borec’s ribs. The jarheads cheered. “Get ‘im,

Deke!” “Whup his greasy ass, Deke!”

Borec was obvious better at wrestling; he ignored the punches and

flipped Deke over like a rag doll. Something whacked the floor hard.

“Ow!” The next time Luger’s face came up he had blood running out the

nose.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Somebody tried to kick at Borec. “Fight fair,

greaser!” Borec rolled and threw Deke over again; fat red drops went

arcing graceful through the air and splattered like thick red oil. “Deke!”

Two jarheads started pushing people aside to clear room to stomp on

Borec.

“
STOP
!”

Amazing enough, everyone did. I turned around to see Payne come

thundering right into the middle of the fight, grab Borec by the collar

and the seat of the pants, lift him off the floor and shake him ‘til he let

go of Luger.

Deke sat up, clamped a hand over his bloody nose. “Thir! Thith

greather—-”

“SHUT UP!”

One of Deke’s buddies tried to jump in. “Sir! Borec threw the first—

”

“SHUT UP!” Payne swung Borec around and lobbed him in the

general direction of the front door, then grabbed Deke by the collar and

hauled him to his feet. “You two, outside!” He gave Deke a hard shove

that sent him staggering.

Spinning around, Payne caught us all in a single glare. “The rest of

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you, break it up! Back to work!” He speared me with a glare. “You, with

the mop! Get down here and get this blood cleaned up!” Storming out

the door, he caught Luger with one hand, Borec with the other, started

frogmarching them away. Luger whined something I couldn’t quite hear.

“I don’t care who started it! You fight when I give you
permission
to

fight! Understood?”

Whine, whine.

“I can’t
hear
you!”

And so on. The crowd broke up, grumbling about how that crummy

greaser didn’t fight fair and Deke woulda whupped him if Payne hadn’t

a showed up and bullshit that greaser had Deke cold and oh yeah you

wanna put money on it? and all that kinda stuff. Payne’s yelling tapered

off in the distance. I jumped down from my bunk, started looking around

for the bucket.

Great. Just fritzin’ great. What a peer group. Twenty junior jarheads

and a bunch of violent psychotics. I couldn’t
wait
‘til I found a phone.

But until then, pretend to go with the flow.

I dunked the mop in the bucket, slopped some water on the floor,

started scrubbing.

Scott wandered by, stopped, stood right where I was trying to mop.

“Wow, dude. D’ja see that? Like, what happened, anyway?”

Make that twenty jarheads, some psychotics, and one total airhead

McPunk.

I slopped more water down, splashed some on Scott’s boots.

“Move,” I said. He looked at me for a mo, the expression on his face

either total teflon cool or plain utter stupidity, I couldn’t tell (and didn’t

care) which. Then he turned, casual, and looked out the door.

“Hey, check it out, dude! Piggy’s back!”

“Piggy?”

A half dozen guys came running over. Jankowicz sort of staggered

in the door. “Piggy, my man!” Scott called out, and he gave him a big

friendly slap on the back.

Jankowicz barfed chocolate brownies all over my floor.

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Great.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 0/B

Evening: After inspection—

(Some gray-haired old grizzle that even Payne seemed to be afraid

of came in, ran his fingers over some dusty boards, poked his nose in a

few footlockers, and made some general bitchy comments, which the

Grade Four who was following him scribbled down dutiful on a

clipboard. The old grizzle growled, “Floor looks good,” and I puffed up.

He added, “Needs wax, though,” and I remembered I was pissed at the

whole world.)

After cleaning the bunkhouse
again
—

(Mop the floor, wax the floor; mop again, wax again; buff it shiny,

wax the shine; buff the second coat ‘til you can skate on it. Hey Dad,

this is working out just like you planned! Cash in my college bonds; I

won’t need ‘em. Twelve weeks of this and I’ll be the best damn deck

wiper Nakamura ever hired!)

After the official orientation—

(Payne formed us up, marched us out and around the track, up to the

reviewing stand, where the same gray-haired old grizzle who inspected

us before was waiting with a few of his friends.

“At ease!” he said. Lawrence Borec sat down on the grass. Payne

hauled him to his feet again. “Good evening, gentlemen!” the old guy