Cyberpunk (3 page)

it worth dumping MoJo like that, but there was no point trying to talk to

Rayno when he was clammed, so I locked eyes on him. He went back to

looking at his caffix, taking the occasional sip. For a mo I had this crazy

idea he was being too derzky to talk just ‘cause he wanted me to flag his

new hair. This week it was bleached Utter Aryan White, side-shaved,

and stiffed out into The Wedge. Geez, it
did
look sharp!

Of course it did. Rayno always looked sharp. Rayno was seventeen,

and a junior. He wore scruff black leather and flash plastic; he kept his

style current to the nanosecond and cranked to the max. Rayno was

derzky
realitized.

But after a minute or so I realized he wasn’t being derzky, he was

being too
pissed
to talk. Which was reassuring, in a way, given how

worried he had me, but watching it got old real fast so I craned my neck,

looked over the booth divider, gave Buddy’s the quick scan. Nope,

nobody else interesting in the place. Somebody back in the kitchen must

have flagged me when I stuck my head up, though, ‘cause as soon as I

was back down solid in my seat the little trademark snatch of fifties

music swooped by, stereo shifting to a focus at the wall end of the table,

and the foot-high holo of Buddy McFry came jitterbugging out from

behind the napkin dispenser.

“Good morning and welcome to Buddy’s!” the holo said, all bright

and enthusiastic, looking just dweeby as could be in his peaked cap,

white shirt, pegged chinos and penny loafers. “Today’s breakfast special

is two genuine high-cholesterol eggs fried in bacon fat, two strips of real

hickory-smoked bacon, and a cup of our world famous double-caffeine

coffee! Sure, it’s unhealthy and ecologically unsound, but don’t you

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

deserve
a little guilty pleasure today?” The holo grinned, danced to a

stop; pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and a pad out of his back

pocket, set pencil point to paper, and froze. The pseudosax hit a peak

and the music stopped.

The holo wasn’t true interactive, of course. It was just waiting for

me to say something that it could compress, stick in the fryboy’s

voicemail queue. I checked my watch. Ten. Eleven. Twelve...

At fifteen seconds, the program timed out. The music started up

again. The holo lifted the pencil off the order pad and shook his head.

“Well I can see that you’re not interested in today’s special. Would you

like to see a menu, or are you ready to order now?” Again, the music

peaked and died. The little dork froze, grinning.

This time it took twenty seconds to time out, and then the holo

stayed frozen. Instead, a realtime voice from an actual human came

through, raspy. “
Look kid, you sit in the booth, there’s a two-dollar

minimum
.
So you gonna order or what
?”

Rayno cracked out of his big silence. “We are waiting for the rest of

our party,” he said, in a great low and sullen. “We will order then. In the

meantime, don’t ‘bug’ us, ‘man’.”

There was a lag of a coupla seconds, then the music started up again.

“Oh, you need more time to think?” the holo said cheerful, as it started

to dance back towards the napkin dispenser. “Okay, I’ll be back—”

Rayno closed his eyes, tilted his head back, raised his voice. “
And

lose the goddam holo
!” Buddy McFry vanished. Rayno went back to

scowling at his caffix.

I decided to see how long it’d take
him
to time out.

At0/ 8:0/0/ :20/ Lisa zagged in, her lank blonde hair swinging in lazy

circles, her feet moving in that slow, twitchy walk that meant she had

her earcorks in and tuned for music. She was wearing her mirrored

contacts today, which gave her eyes a truly appropriate utter vacant

look; Lisa is Rayno’s girl, or at least she hopes she is. I can see why.

Rayno’s seventeen, and a junior—a year older than Georgie, two years

and a grade up on Lisa. And where Georgie tends to fat and a touch of

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

dweebism, like most true cyberpunks (and little Mikey Harris just ain’t

in the game, no matter how gifted his headworks are supposed to be),

Rayno is the Master Controller of our little gang and he has looks and

style to burn.

So, no surprise Lisa’s got it locked for him. Every move she makes

says she’s begging for it, but he’s too robo, too tough to notice. He

dances with himself; he won’t even touch her. She bopped over to the

booth and slid into her seat next to Rayno, trying hard to get a thigh

under his hand. He just put both hands on his caffix cup and didn’t give

her so much as a blink.

For a flicker, Lisa looked miserable. There she was, wearing her best

white tatterblouse and no bra, and she couldn’t even get Rayno to look at

her. I’m not so good at robo yet so I copped a quick, guilty peek down

her cleavage, but it’s certified Boolean true/true she wasn’t flashing that

skin for me. Basic rules of the game: Sharp haircut beats 160/ IQ.

Those who can’t play, heckle. I opened my mouth to tell her she’d

make more progress on Rayno if she
had
a cleavage to show off, first,

but killed my words in the output queue. Her fingernails were getting

long and nasty and that green nailpolish looked toxic.

Then the DJ in her head zapped out another tune and her miserable

look flickered off. She went back to face dancing. Never even noticed it

when the little trademark sample of fifties music swooped by and Buddy

McFry came dancing on out from behind the napkin dispenser.

“Good morning and welcome to Buddy’s!” the holo started.

“We are still waiting for our fourth,” Rayno growled, low and

sullen. You’d of thought he said
I love you forever
, the way Lisa’s eyes

lit up. Buddy McFry zapped off in mid-step.

Rayno went back to glaring into his caffix. Lisa took over the job of

locking eyes on him. I watched her watch him watch his caffix for a

while, Rayno looking like a warped black mantis in her mirrored pinball

eyes, and couldn’t decide if I should yawn or puke, she was being so

uncool and glandular.

Georgie still wasn’t there at 8:0/ 5:0/0/ . Rayno checked his watch one

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

more time, then finally looked up. “Hellgate’s been cracked,” he said,

soft.

I swore. Georgie and I’d spent a lot of time working up a truly

wicked secure for Hellgate. It was the sole entry point to OurNet, and we

had some real
strong
reasons for wanting to keep that little piece of the

virtual universe ultra-private.

Not from other cyberkids. They were just minor-league nuisances.

We could deal with them. It was our parents we were worried about:

They would truly smoke their motherboards if they ever found out what

we were
really
up to, and now a parent—or somebody with no finesse,

anyway—was messing with OurNet.

“Georgie’s old man?” I asked.

“Looks that way.”

I swore again. It figured. Most of OurNet was virtual; not real

hardware at all. The only absolute physical piece, and therefore the only

real vulnerable point, was Hellgate.

Which also happened to be Georgie’s old man’s Honeywell-Bull

office system.

For a mo I felt hot, angry. Why couldn’t Georgie’s old man keep his

big nose out of our business? He’s the one who
gave
me and Georgie a

partition of the Bull in the first place! He’s the one who kept saying that

when he was a kid he was a hacker or a phreaker or whatever the

chipheads who were too lame to be NuWavers called themselves, and

‘cause of that he
understands
us and wants to
guide
us. For chrissakes,

he was the one who had us crack the copy protect on MegaCAD so he

could sell it bootleg!

Isn’t that just like an Older? To tell you something is your private

space, then go snooping through your drawers when he thinks you’re not

looking? It’s just so utter
Dad
.

I was still working through the fuming mad and clenching teeth

routine when Lisa quit face dancing and spoke. Surprise. She wasn’t

brain-dead after all, she just looked that way.

“Any idea oh, how
far
in he got?” When Lisa has her earcorks in she

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

talks in beat.

Rayno looked through her, at the front door. Georgie’d just walked

in. “We’re gonna find out,” Rayno said. Georgie was coming in smiling,

but when he flicked his hornrimmed videoshades to transparent and saw

that look in Rayno’s eyes, his legs snapped into slow and feeble mode.

Dragging his reluctant chubby carcass up to the booth, he unzipped his

Weathered EarthTones windbreaker, pushed his videoshades back up his

nose (they tended to slide down), and sat down next to me like the seat

might be booby-trapped. “Good Morning Georgie,” Rayno said, smiling

like a shark.

“I didn’t glitch,” Georgie whined. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Then how the Hell did he do it?”

“You know how he is, he’s weird. He likes puzzles.” Georgie ran a

hand through his frizzy brown hair and looked to me for backup, but I

didn’t particularly want to get between Rayno and somebody he was

pissed at. “That’s how come I was late. He was trying to weasel more

out of me, but I didn’t tell him a thing. I think he never made it out the

back side of Hellgate. He didn’t ask about the Big One.”

Rayno actually sat back, pointed at us all, and smiled sly and toothy.

“You kids.” He looked down, shook his head, let out a little half laugh

like it was real funny. “Oh, you kids. You just don’t know how
lucky

you are. I was in OurNet late last night and flagged somebody who

didn’t know the passwords was dicking around with the gatekeeper. I put

in a new blind alley in Hellgate and ringed it with killer crashpoints. By

the time your old man figures out how to get through them, well...”

I sighed relief. See what I mean about being derzky? All the dark

looks and danger words were just for style. We’d been outlooped again;

Rayno had total control all along.

BAM!
He slammed a fist down on the table. “But
dammit
, Georgie!”

Rayno lunged halfway across the table, grabbed Georgie by the lapels

and sent his videoshades flying, pushed a tight fist right under his nose.

“From now on, you keep a closer
watch
on your old man!” For a few

flickers there Georgie looked genuine terrified, like he thought Rayno

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

was going to rip his throat out with his bare teeth or something.

I guess that was the effect Rayno wanted to achieve. He let Georgie

sweat a mo more, then relaxed, smiled, pushed Georgie back into his

seat and began straightening his windbreaker, brushing imaginary dust

off his shoulders, picking up his shades and putting them back on his