Cyberpunk (7 page)

He needs that for his homework, don’t you, Mikey?”

Dad’s voice was a low, gruff thing that barely got out through

clenched teeth. “I’m tired of hearing you make excuses for your son,

Sherri. I mean it.” He unplugged the CityLink.

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“But honey, he’s just a boy. I’m sure it was just a prank.”

With a grunt, Dad picked up all of MoJo, ripping the Death Cannon

fiber right out of its socket. “Somehow Audrey managed to raise three

kids without any
pranks
like this.”

Incredible. For the first time in my entire life, I saw fire flash in my

Mom’s eyes. “Audrey?” You could practically see her hackles go up and

the claws come out. “
Audrey?
Look here,
honey
, I am sick unto goddam

death
of being compared to Audrey! Ever since the day we got married

it’s been ‘Audrey did this’ and ‘Audrey could do that.’ If she was so

goddam perfect why did you ever leave her for
me
?”

Dad froze. Rigid. Furious. For a mo there I thought sure he was

going to break MoJo in half right over Mom’s head.

The moment passed. Cussing silent, Dad shouldered past her and

started clomping down the steps. “I mean it!” he yelled up the stairwell.

“This damned thing goes in the basement, and tomorrow I’m calling

CityNet and getting his private line ripped out! If he has any schoolwork

he needs to do on computer he can damn well use the one in the den,

where I can watch him!”

I locked eyes on Mom. She was looking down at her hands, her face

screwed in a tight knot, tears leaking in slow trickles down the sides of

her cheeks.
C’mon, Mom. Look up. Look at me. This’d be a good time to

give your son some true backup, mom.

She broke, turned, went chasing Dad down the steps. “Honey?” she

called out, all plaintive little girl. “Honey, I’m sorry. I don’t know what

got into me. Maybe you’re right.”

Oh, fritzing terrific. Good show, Mom. I slammed my bedroom door

and locked it. “Go ahead and sulk!” I heard Dad’s shout come filtering

up from the basement. “It won’t do you any good!”

One last flash of anger: I crushed the model Saturn V like the paper

tube it was, and threw some pillows around ‘til I didn’t feel like

breaking anything else. Then I picked up my CityLink box from where

from where Dad had thrown it, spliced together a working NetLine fiber

from the pieces on the floor, and went to the closet and hauled out my

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Starfire.

I’d watched over Dad’s shoulders often enough to know his account

numbers and access codes. It usually took a few days for the links to

break apart after one of our fun runs. I didn’t really need OurNet; most

of the trojan horses would still be active. I jacked in, got on line, and got

down to business. It took about half an hour.

My HouseFiber was out—in pieces all over the floor, to be honest—

but I could backlink to Dad’s computer through CityNet. Like I

expected, he was down in the den, using his computer to scan my school

records.

Fine. He wouldn’t find out anything. Rayno’d showed us how to fix

school records, oh, five—six months ago, at least. I gave Dad a minute

to flounder around, then crashed in and sent a new message to his vid

display.

“Dad,” it said, “there’s going to be some changes around here.”

It took a few seconds to sink in. I got up and made sure the door was

locked real solid, but I still got almost half a scare when he came

thudding up the stairs. The old relic sounded like a fritzing herd of

elephants.

“MIKHAIL!” He slammed into the door. “Open this! Now!”

“No.”

“If you don’t open this door before I count to ten, I’m going to break

it down! One!”

“Before you do that—”

“Two!”

“Better call your bank.”

“Three!”

“H320-5127-01R.” That was his checking account access code. He

went silent for a couple seconds.

“Young man, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull—”

“I’m not trying anything. It’s done already.”

Mom came padding tentative up the stairs and asked, soft, “What’s

going on, honey?”

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“Shut up, Sherri.” His voice dropped down to a strained

normal/quiet. “What did you do, Mikhail?”

“Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you.”

“You mean, you got into the bank computer and
erased
my checking

account?”

“Savings and mortgage on the house, too.”

“Oh my God ... “

Mom said, “He’s just angry, David. Give him time to cool off.

Mikey, you wouldn’t
really
do that to us, would you?”

“Then I accessed Fuji-DynaRand,” I said. “Wiped your job. Your

pension. I got into your plastic, too.”

“He couldn’t have, David. Could he?”

“
Mikhail!
” He hit the door. I jumped back; I’d definitely heard wood

splinter around the lock. “I am going to wring your scrawny
neck
!”

“Wait!” I shouted back. “I copied all your files before I purged!

There is a way to recover!”

He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. “Give

me the copies right now and I’ll just forget that this ever happened.”

“I can’t. I mean, I did backups into other systems. And I encrypted

the files and hid them where only I know how to access.”

There was quiet. No, in a nano I realized it wasn’t quiet, it was Mom

and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the door but all I caught was

Mom saying ‘why not?’ and Dad saying, ‘but what if he
is
telling the

truth?’

“Okay, Mikhail,” Dad said at last, “what do you want?”

I locked up. It was an embarasser; what
did
I want? I hadn’t thought

that far ahead. Me, caught without a program! I dropped half a laugh,

then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get me I

couldn’t get myself, or with Rayno’s help. Rayno! I wanted to get in

touch with him, is what I wanted. I’d pulled this whole thing off without

Rayno!

I decided then it’d probably be better if my Dad didn’t know about

the Starfire, so I told him the first thing I wanted was my Miko-Gyoja

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

back. It took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get

it. He stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I’d really purged

him.

He was real subdued when he brought MoJo back up.

I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn’t come up

with anything more than I wanted them to leave me alone and stop

telling me what to do. I got MoJo back into my room without being

pulped, locked the door, and got my system more or less back together.

Then I booted up, got on line, and gave Dad his job back.

Next I tried to log into OurNet, but Georgie’s old man had taken the

no-style approach to shutting us down. The line was radio silence dead.

Fine. There were other bulletin boards we sometimes used. I left

flags and messages all over the place for Rayno and Georgie to call me,

then stayed up half the night playing the Battle of Peshawar just to make

sure Dad didn’t try anything. My mind wasn’t on the game, though. The

towelheads were winning this time, so I had to withdraw my surviving

T-72s and nuke the city.

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Chapter 0/ 5

“...mmmmf mmm mmmumble mumble mmf. --
crackle
— mumble

oh-seven-hundred —
pssht
— and you are
go
for throttle
up
.”

Dim, slow, somewhere back in the vacant gray chasms of my

mindspace, I flagged it was morning. That, and I’d had a rough night:

wasn’t sure quite
how
, though. The memories were swimming around all

vague and elusive like ornamental crystal cybercarp in a black garden

pond. Every now and then one got near the surface and I caught the

murky flash of light off green glass scales...

Oh yeah, that’s right. I remembered now. It was the giant radioactive

spiders again. The mutant tarantulas of
Arachnus
had escaped from their

partition, crawled into my
Battle of Peshawar
folder. The Indian 3rd

Armoured tangled with them just outside of Amritsar—which was great,

took a lot of pressure off my eastern front—but the last thing I

remembered, I’d just parked my T-72 in front of Martin’s Micros and

was getting out to feed the parking meter when I got jumped by a

Vijayanta main battle tank with eight legs and spinnerets. Now I was all

trussed up in giant cobwebs and lying on a shelf in the Spider King’s

larder...

Okay Mikey, no problem. We’ve gotten out of this trap before. Just

need to focus, is all
. I allocated another mo for resting up, then rubbed

my magic ring twice, took a few quick breaths and—

Mmph!
Good, I felt the webbing give a little on my left side.

Another try before the spell fades? Right; one, two—

Urgh!
My left hand broke free. Slow, clumsy, I dragged it up to my

face and starting brushing at the sticky silk and gunk that covered my

eyes.

Bad news. There weren’t any cobwebs. There wasn’t anything in my

face at all, ‘side from blankets and my own hair. Which meant the whole

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bit about the giant spider attack was all just a dream.

And the part about erasing Dad was the reality.

Okay Mikey, too late to try for an undo. May as well boot up and see

where we saved the game last night
. I got my eyes open—first the right

one, then the left one, then both at the same time—and took a look out

the window. At gray skies. Clouds hanging low and threatening rain. A

couple depressed little sparrows, feathers all puffed up and necks pulled

short, clinging tight to the dwarf maple branches like the borderline

drizzle had them too bummed to fly.

Bleah.

Rolling over, I got a solid locate on my feet, finished kicking them

free from the blankets, migrated them down to the floor. Sitting up, I

started with the rubbing eyes and I-could-swallow-an-ostrich-egg-whole

yawns.

By and by, my brain came back online and I looked across the room.

MoJo was alive, bright, awake. The Gyoja Gerbil was standing there onscreen,

stupid little rat-toothed smile on his face, next to a shimmering,

vibrating, silent yellow gong. Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten, I’d turned

the sound down last night, right about the time I’d thrown my last eight

Backfire bombers against the Indian infantry. That cluster bomb sound

effect did tend to get noisy. One last yawn, and then I got out of bed and

shuffled over to my desk.

Parts of the boot script keyed off the keyboard interrupt. I spun the