Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  181

  CAT RAMBO

  database links or bio-mods that let them do something specialized, they’re

  the ones getting the jobs.

  Usually your family’s there to wish you luck. Mine wasn’t, of course. And

  Grizz never said anything about her home life. The only times I’ve asked, she

  shut me down quick. Which makes me think it was bad, real bad, because

  Grizz doesn’t pull punches.

  You could tell who expected to make it and who was going through the

  motions. Grizz marched up to her test machine like she was going to kick

  its ass three times around the block. I slid into my seat and waited for

  instructions.

  You see vidplots this time of year circling around the Exams. Someone gets

  placed in the wrong job—wacky! Two people get switched by accident—

  hilarious! Someone cheats someone out of their job but ultimately gets

  served—heartwarming and reassuring!

  In the programs, though, all you see is a quick shot of the person at the

  Exams. They don’t tell you that you’ll sit there for three hours while they

  analyze and explore your wetware, and then another two for the memory and

  experience tap.

  And after all that, you won’t know for days.

  Grizz wouldn’t say anything about how she thought she’d done—she was

  afraid of jinxing it, I think, plus she was still pissed at me about the Lorelei business.

  I could tell as soon as we walked out, though, she was happy. I walked her

  back to Ajah’s and said I was heading down to the court to see if our forms

  had come in. She nodded and headed inside. It was a gray morning. But

  nice—some sunlight filtered down through the brown haze that sat way up in

  the sky for once. The smoke-eater trees along the street gleamed bright

  green, and down near the trunks sat clumps of pale-blue flowers, most of

  them coming into their prime, although a few were browned and curling. I

  could feel all that memory on my back, lying across my shoulder blades, and

  I found myself Capturing.

  I’d only heard it described before—most people don’t have the focus or the

  memory to do it more than a split-second. But I opened to every detail: the

  182

  MEMORIES OF MOMENTS, BRIGHT AS FALLING STARS

  watery sepia sunlight and the shimmer playing over the feathers of the two

  starlings on a branch near me. The cars whispering across the street and two

  sirens battling it out, probably bound for St. Joe Emergency Services. The

  colors, oh, the colors passing by, smears of blue and brown and red flashes like song. The smell of the exhaust and dust mingled with a whiff of Mexican spices

  from the Taco Bell three doors down. Every detail crystal clear and recorded.

  I dropped out of it, feeling my whole body shaking, spasms of warring

  tension and relief like hands gripping my arms and legs.

  I tried to bring it back, tried to make the world go super sharp again, but it

  wouldn’t cooperate. I stood there with jaw and fists clenched, trying to force

  it, but nothing happened.

  Within three days, Grizz had heard. A year of training at the Desmond

  Horticultural Institute, then a three-year internship at the State Gardens

  in Washington. Student housing all four years, which meant I wouldn’t be

  going along.

  At first we fought about it. I figured it was a no-brainer—go there jobless

  or stick here where I had contacts, friends ready with a handout or a few

  days’ work. But once Grizz had been there a while, she insisted, she’d be able

  to scrounge me something so I could move closer.

  Ajah’s girlfriend Suzanne got her set up with a better wardrobe and a

  suitcase from the used clothing store she ran. I bought her new shoes, black

  leather boots with silver grommets, solid and efficient looking.

  “What are you going to do without me?” she asked.

  “I’ve gotten by before,” I said. “You work hard for us, get somewhere. Five

  years down the line, who knows?”

  It was a stupid, facile answer, but we both pretended it was meaningful.

  And we did stay in touch, chatted back and forth in IMs. She was working

  hard, liked her classmates. She read this, and that, and the other thing. They

  kept telling her how well she was doing.

  And unwritten in her messages was the question: What are you doing with

  it, with the memory?

  Because certainly it was doing the same thing on her body as it was on

  mine: thickening like scars healing in reverse, bulky layers of skin-like

  183

  CAT RAMBO

  substance building over each other. In Ajah’s bathroom mirror, I could see

  the skin purpling like bruises around the layers. My sole consolation was

  Capturing; extended effort had paid off and I could summon the experience

  longer now, perhaps ten seconds all together. I kept working at it; Captured

  pieces sell well in upscale markets if you can get a name for yourself.

  And I had the advantage of being able to do it as often as I liked, although

  each time still left me feeling wrung out and weak. I kept trying to Capture

  and never hit the memory’s end; the only limits were my strained senses.

  My eyes took on a perpetual dazzled squint as though holy light surrounded

  everything around me.

  I never told Grizz though. Nor about the fact that every time I went to

  jack into the Net, the drug got between me and the interface. I was glad I

  hadn’t seen Lorelei—I was starting to wonder if she’d given it to me

  deliberately. It scared me. I lost myself in Capturing more and more. I

  started delivering packages for Ajah and Susanne, and laid aside enough

  cash to buy a simple editing package for it.

  Editing is internal work, so you can do it dozing on a park bench if you’ve

  got the mental room to spread out and take a look at the big picture. I did.

  What I wanted to do was start selling clips on the channels. It’d take a

  while though, I could tell, and I was still working out how I’d upload it,

  given the problems jacking in. I figured at some point I’d burn it off to flash memory and then use an all-accessible terminal, with keyboard and mouse.

  In the meantime I caged what meals I could, slept on a round of couches,

  and showed up at Ajah’s often.

  Sometimes after a meal, he’d roll out the still on its mismatched castors,

  and we’d strain its milky contents in order to drink them. He and I would

  sit near the window, passing the bottle back and forth.

  Early on into Grizz’s apprenticeship, he asked me about the memory. He

  said “That med complex near the dock, the one that went bust a few

  months ago, did you guys ever score out of there? I know that was in your

  turf.”

  “Went in one time and scored a little crap but not much.” Our hands

  were both touching the bottle as I took it from him. I added, “Nothing but

  some old memory,” and felt the bottle twitch in his sudden anguished grip.

  “What did you do with it?” he asked, watching me pour.

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  MEMORIES OF MOMENTS, BRIGHT AS FALLING STARS

  “We used it. How do you think she did so well on the Exams?”

  “But you didn’t,” he said, confused.

  “Well, Grizz isn’t a mor
on, and I am, which would account for it.”

  He grunted and took the bottle back.

  “If I’d taken stuff from there,” he said. “I’d just not mention it to anyone

  ever. There have been some nasty customers asking around about it.”

  I went to visit Grizz a few weeks later; her roommate was out of town for

  the weekend. We ate in the cafeteria off her meal card: more food than I’d

  seen in a long time, and then went back to her room and stripped naked to

  lie in each other’s arms.

  We could have been there hours, but eventually we got hungry and went

  back to the cafeteria. The rest of the weekend was the same progression,

  repeated multiple times, up until Sunday afternoon, and the consequent

  tearful, snuffling goodbye. I’d never seen Grizz act sentimental before; it

  didn’t suit her.

  “You need to do something,” she said, looking strained.

  “Other than planning on riding your gravy train?”

  “It’s not that, Jonny, and you know it.”

  I could have told her then about the Capturing, but I was annoyed. Let

  her think me just another peon, living off dole and scavenging. Fine by me.

  The wall phone rang, and she broke off staring at me to answer it.

  “Hello,” she said. “Hello?” She shrugged and hung it up. “Nothing but

  breathing. Fuckazoid pervs.”

  “Get much of that?”

  “Every once in a while,” she said. “Some of the other students don’t like

  Dregs. Afraid I might stink up the classroom.”

  It irritated me, that she’d said how much she liked it and now was asking

  for sympathy, as though her life were worse than mine. So I left it there and

  made my goodbye. She clung to the doorframe, staring after me.

  It wasn’t as though I had much to leave behind; it was perhaps my mind’s

  sullen statement, forgetting my jacket. I got four blocks away, then jogged

  back, ran up the stairs. Knocked on the door and found silence, so I slipped

  the lock and went in.

  185

  CAT RAMBO

  By then . . . by then she was dead, and they had already left her. The

  memory was stripped from her skin, leaving ragged, oozing marks. Her

  throat had been cut with callous efficiency.

  I stood there for at least ten minutes, just breathing. There was no

  chance she was not dead. The world was shaking me by the shoulders and

  all I did was stand there, Capturing, longer than I had ever managed

  before. Every detail, every dust mote riding the air, the smell of the musty

  carpeting and a quarrel next door over a student named Dian.

  I didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. I knew the roommate would be

  there soon to call it in. I might have passed her in the downstairs lobby: a

  thin Eurasian woman with a scar riding her face like an emotion.

  When I got to Ajah’s, they’d been there as well. He’d taken a while to die,

  and they had paid him with leisure, leisure to contemplate what they were

  doing to him. But he was unmistakably dead.

  They had caught him in the preparations for a meal; a block of white

  chicken meat, sized and shaped like a brick, lay on the cutting board, his

  good, all-purpose knife next to it. “Man just needs one good knife for

  everything,” he used to say. A bowl of breadcrumbs and an egg container

  sat near the chicken.

  Someone knocked on the door behind me, and opened it even as I

  turned. It was Lorelei, still well-heeled and clean. Her bosses must be

  paying well.

  “Jonny,” she said. She didn’t even look at Ajah’s body. Unsurprised. “Is

  it true?”

  “Is what true?”

  “They said he gave up a name, just one, but when I heard the name, I

  knew there had to be two.”

  “What was the name?”

  She chuckled. “You know already, I think. Grizz.”

  “Because of the memory?”

  “It’s more than memory. It grows as you add to it. Self-perpetuating. New

  tech—very special. Very expensive.”

  “We found it in the garbage!”

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  MEMORIES OF MOMENTS, BRIGHT AS FALLING STARS

  She laughed. “You’ve done it yourself, I know. What’s the best way to

  steal from work?”

  “Stick it in the trash and pick it up later,” I realized.

  She nodded. “But when two streets come along, and take it first, you’re

  out of luck.” Her smile was cold. “So then you ask around, send a few

  people to track it.”

  “Did you mean to poison the Net for me? Was that part of it?”

  “You mean you haven’t found the cure yet?” she said. “Play around with

  folk remedies. It’ll come to you. But no. I was angry and figured I’d fuck

  you over the way you did me.”

  “Do they know my name?”

  She smiled in silence at me.

  “Answer me, you cunt,” I said. Three steps forward and I was in her face.

  She backed up toward the door, still smiling.

  The knife was in easy reach. I stabbed her once, then again. And

  again. Capturing every moment, letting it sear itself into the memory,

  and I swear it went hot as the bytes of experience wrote themselves

  along my back.

  “They don’t—” she started to say, then choked and fell forward, her

  head flopping to one side in time with the knife blows. She almost fell on

  me, but I pushed her away. Her wallet held black-market script, and plenty

  of it, along with some credit cards. I didn’t see any salvageable mods. The

  GPS’s purple glimmer tempted me, but they can backtrack those. I didn’t

  want anything traceable.

  All the time that I rifled through her belongings, feeling the dead weight

  she had become, I played the memory back of the forward lurch, the head

  flop and twist, again, again, her eyes going dull and glassy. The thoughts

  seared on my back as though it were on fire, but I kept on recording it, longer and more intense than I ever had before.

  She was right about the folk remedies; feverfew and valerian made the drug

  relax its hold and let me slide back into cyberspace. I’ve published a few

  pieces: a spring day with pigeons, an experimental subway ride, a sunset over

  the river. Pretty stuff, where I can find it. It seems scarce.

  187

  CAT RAMBO

  One reviewer called me a brave new talent; another easy and glib. The

  sales are still slow, but they’ll get better. My latest show is called “Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars”—all stuff on the beach at dawn, the

  gulls walking back and forth at the waves’ edge and the foam clinging to the

  wet sand before it’s blown away by the wind.

  I don’t use the Captures of Grizz’s body or Lorelei’s death in my art, but I

  replay them often, obsessively. Sitting on the toilet, showering, eating,

  walking— Capturing other things is the only way I have to escape them.

  Between the royalties and Susanne’s continued employment though, I do

  well enough. She’s moved into Ajah’s place, and I’ve taken the room behind

  the clothing store where she used to live. I cook what I can there, small and

  tasteless meals, and watch the memories in my head. Memories of moments,

  as bright as falling stars.

  188
/>   ROCK ON

  Pat Cadigan

  Rain woke me. I thought, shit, here I am, Lady Rain-in-the- Face, because

  that’s where it was hitting, right in the old face. Sat up and saw I was still on Newbury Street. See beautiful downtown Boston. Was Newbury Street

  downtown? In the middle of the night, did it matter? No, it did not. And not a

  soul in sight. Like everybody said, let’s get Gina drunk and while she’s passed out, we’ll all move to Vermont. Do I love New England? A great place to live,

  but you wouldn’t want to visit here.

  I smeared my hair out of my eyes and wondered if anyone was looking for me

  now. Hey, anybody shy a forty-year-old rock ’n’ roll sinner?

  I scuttled into the doorway of one of those quaint old buildings where there

  was a shop with the entrance below ground level. A little awning kept the rain

  off but pissed water down in a maddening beat. Wrung the water out of my

  wrap pants and my hair and just sat being damp. Cold, too, I guess, but didn’t

  feel that so much.

  Sat a long time with my chin on my knees: you know, it made me feel like a

  kid again. When I started nodding my head, I began to pick up on something.

  Just primal but I tap into that amazing well. Man-O-War, if you could see me

  now. By the time the blueboys found me, I was rocking pretty good.

  And that was the punchline. I’d never tried to get up and leave, but if I had,

  I’d have found I was locked into place in a sticky field. Made to catch the b&e kids in the act until the blueboys could get around to coming out and getting

  them. I’d been sitting in a trap and digging it. The story of my life.

  They were nice to me. Led me, read me, dried me out. Fined me a hundred,

  sent me on my way in time for breakfast.

  Awful time to see and be seen, righteous awful. For the first three hours after you get up, people can tell whether you’ve got a broken heart or not. The

  solution is, either you get up real early so your camouflage is in place by the time everybody else is out, or you don’t go to bed. Don’t go to bed ought to

  work all the time, but it doesn’t. Sometimes when you don’t go to bed, people

  PAT CADIGAN

  can see whether you’ve got a broken heart all day long. I schlepped it, searching for an uncrowded breakfast bar and not looking at anyone who was looking at

  me. But I had this urge to stop random pedestrians and say, Yeah, yeah, it’s true, but it was rock ’n’ roll broke my poor old heart, not a person, don’t cry for me or I’ll pop your chocks.