Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  of streetside sociobiology, mitigated by a loyalty to friends, a mystical faith in brain chips and amphetamines. His underside a masochistic dwarf, the troll

  of self-doubt, lacerating itself with guilt.

  And then Swish, a woman with an unsightly growth, errant glands that were

  like tumors in her, something other people called “testicles.” Perpetually hungry for the means to dampen the pain of an infinite self-derision that mimicked her father’s utter rejection of her. A mystical faith in synthetic morphine.

  . . . Jerome mentally reeling with disorientation, seeing the others as a

  network of distorted self-images, caricatures of grotesque ambitions. Beyond

  them he glimpsed another realm through a break in the psychic clouds: the

  Plateau, the whispering plane of brain chips linked on forbidden frequencies,

  an electronic haven for doing deals unseen by cops; a Plateau prowled only

  by the exquisitely ruthless; a vista of enormous challenges and inconceivable

  risks and always the potential for getting lost, for madness. A place roamed

  by the wolves of wetware.

  There was a siren quiver from that place, a soundless howling, pulling at

  them . . . drawing them in . . .

  “Uh-uh, wolflost, pross,” Bones said, maybe aloud or maybe through the

  chips. Translated from chip shorthand, those two syllables meant. “Stay away

  from the Plateau, or we get sucked into it, we lose our focus. Concentrate on

  parallel processing function.”

  359

  JOHN SHIRLEY

  Jerome looked behind his eyelids, sorted through the files. He moved the

  cursor down . . .

  Suddenly, it was there. The group-thinking capacity looming above them,

  a sentient skyscraper. They all felt a rush of megalomaniacal pleasure in

  identifying with it; with a towering edifice of Mind. Five chips became One.

  They were ready. Jessie transmitted the bait.

  Alerted to an illegal use of implant chips, the trashcan was squeaking down

  the hall, scanning to precisely locate the source. It came to a sudden stop,

  rocking on its wheels in front of their cell. Jessie reached through the bars

  and touched its input jack.

  The machine froze with a clack midway through a turn, and hummed as it

  processed what they fed it. Would the robot bite?

  Bones had a program for the IBM Cyberguard Fourteens, with all the

  protocol and a range of sample entry codes. Parallel processing from samples

  took less than two seconds to decrypt the trashcan’s access code. Then—

  They were in. The hard part was the reprogramming.

  Jerome found the way. He told the trashcan that he wasn’t Eric Wexler,

  because the DNA code was all wrong, if you looked close enough; what we

  have here is a case of mistaken identity.

  Since this information seemed to be coming from authorized sources—the

  decrypted access code made them authorized—the trashcan fell for the gag

  and opened the cage.

  The trashcan took the five Eric Wexlers down the hall—that was Jessie’s doing,

  showing them how to make it think of five as one, something his people had

  learned from the immigration computers. It escorted them through the plastiflex door, through the steel door, and into Receiving. The human guard was heaping

  sugar into his antique Ronald McDonald coffee mug and watching The Mutilated on his wallet TV. Bones and Jessie were in the room and moving in on him before he broke free of the television and went for the button. Bones’s long left arm spiked out and his stiffened fingers hit a nerve cluster below the guy’s left ear, and he went down, the sugar dispenser in one hand swishing a white fan onto the floor.

  Jerome’s chip had cross-referenced Bones’s attack style. Bones was trained

  by commandos, the chip said. Military elite. Was he a plant? Bones smiled at

  360

  WOLVES OF THE PLATEAU

  him and tilted his head, which Jerome’s chip read as: No. I’m trained by the Underground. Radics.

  Jessie was at the console, deactivating the trashcan, killing the cameras,

  opening the outer doors. Jessie and Swish led the way out, Swish whining

  softly and biting her lip. There were two more guards at the gate, one of them

  asleep. Jessie had taken the gun from the guy Bones had put under, so the

  first guard at the gate was dead before he could hit an alarm. The catnapping

  guy woke and yelled with hoarse terror, and then Jessie shot him in the throat.

  Watching the guard fall, spinning, blood making its own slow-motion spiral

  in the air, Jerome felt a perfect mingling of sickness, fear, and self-disgust.

  The guard was young, wearing a cheap wedding ring, probably had a young

  family. So Jerome stepped over the dying man and made an adjustment; used

  his chip, chilled himself out with adrenaline. Had to—he was committed

  now. And he knew with a bland certainty that they had reached the Plateau

  after all.

  He would live on the Plateau now. He belonged there, now that he was one

  of the wolves.

  361

  THE NOSTALGIST

  By Daniel H. Wilson

  He was an old man who lived in a modest gonfab, and over the last eighty

  hours his Eyes™ and Ears™ had begun to fail. In the first forty hours, he

  had ignored the increasingly strident sounds of the city of Vanille and

  focused on teaching the boy who lived with him. But after another forty

  hours the old man could no longer stand the Doppler-affected murmur of

  travelers on the slidewalks outside, and the sight of the boy’s familiar

  deformities became overwhelming. It made the boy sad to see the old man’s

  stifled revulsion, so he busied himself by sliding the hanging plastic sheets

  of the inflatable dwelling into layers that dampened the street noise. The

  semitransparent veils were stiff with grime and they hung still and useless

  like furled, ruined sails.

  The old man was gnarled and bent, and his tendons were like taut cords

  beneath the skin of his arms. He wore a soiled white undershirt and his

  sagging chest bristled with gray hairs. A smooth patch of pink skin occupied

  a hollow under his left collarbone, marking the place where a rifle slug had

  passed cleanly through many decades before. He had been a father, an

  engineer, and a war-fighter, but for many years now he had lived peacefully

  with the boy.

  Everything about the old man was natural and wrinkled except for his

  Eyes™ and Ears™, thick glasses resting on the creased bridge of his nose and

  two flesh-colored buds nestled in his ears. They were battered technological

  artifacts that captured sights and sounds and sanitized every visual and

  auditory experience. The old man sometimes wondered whether he could

  bear to live without these artifacts. He did not think so.

  “Grandpa,” the boy said as he arranged the yellowed plastic curtains.

  “Today I will visit Vanille City and buy you new Eyes™ and Ears™.”

  The old man had raised the boy and healed him when he was sick, and the

  boy loved him.

  “No, no,” replied the old man. “The people there are cruel. I can go

  myself.”

  “Then I will visit the metro fab and bring you some lunch.”

  DANIEL H. WILSON

  “Very well,” said the old man, and he pulled on his woolen coat.

  A faded photo of the boy,
blond and smiling and happy, hung next to the

  door of the gonfab. They passed by the photo, pushed the door flaps aside,

  and walked together into the brilliant dome light. A refreshing breeze ruffled

  the boy’s hair. He faced into it as he headed for the slidewalk at the end of

  the path. A scrolling gallery of pedestrians passed steadily by. Sometimes the

  fleeting pedestrians made odd faces at the boy, but he was not angry. Other

  pedestrians, the older ones, looked at him and were afraid or sad, but tried

  not to show it. Instead, they stepped politely onto faster slidestrips further

  away from the stained gonfab.

  “I will meet you back here in one hour,” said the old man.

  “See you,” replied the boy, and the old man winced. His failing Ears™ had

  let through some of the grating quality of the boy’s true voice, and it

  unsettled him. But his Ears™ crackled back online and, as the slidestrips

  pulled them away in separate directions, he chose only to wave goodbye.

  The boy did not wear Eyes™ or Ears™. Near the time of the boy’s birth, he

  had undergone direct sensory augmentation. The old man had seen to it

  himself. When the boy squinted in just the right way, he could see the

  velocity trajectories of objects hovering in the air. When he closed his eyes

  entirely, he could watch the maximum probability version of the world

  continue to unfold around him. He was thankful for his gift and did not

  complain about his lessons or cry out when the old man made adjustments

  or improvements to the devices.

  The city is unsafe and I must protect the old man, thought the boy. He will probably visit the taudi quarter for used gear. Mark his trajectory well, he told himself. Remember to be alert to the present and to the future.

  The boy expertly skipped across decelerating slidestrips until his direction

  changed. Other passengers shied away in disgust, but again the boy did not

  mind. He walked directly to the center strip and was accelerated to top

  speed. A vanilla-smelling breeze pushed thin blond hair from his disfigured,

  smiling face.

  • • •

  364

  THE NOSTALGIST

  The old man smiled as he cruised along the slidewalk. The systematic flow of

  identical people was beautiful. The men wore dark blue suits and red ties. Some of them carried briefcases or wore hats. The women wore dark blue skirts and white blouses with red neckerchiefs. The men and women walked in lockstep and were

  either silent or extremely polite. There was a glow of friendly recognition between the pedestrians, and it made the old man feel very glad, and also very cautious.

  I must hurry to the taudi quarter and be careful, he thought. The rigs there have all been stolen or taken from the dead, but I have no choice.

  The old man made his way to the decelerator strip, but a dark-suited

  businessman blocked his path. He gingerly tapped the man on his padded

  shoulder. The businessman in the neatly pressed suit spun around and

  grabbed the old man by his coat.

  “Don’t touch me,” he spat.

  For a split second the clean-cut businessman transformed into a gaunt and

  dirty vagrant. A writhing tattoo snaked down half of his stubbled face and

  curled around his neck. The old man blinked hard, and the dark-suited man

  reappeared, smiling. The old man hastily tore himself from the man’s grasp

  and pushed to the exit and the taudi quarter beyond.

  Bright yellow dome light glistened from towering, monolithic buildings in

  the taudi quarter. It reflected off of polished sidewalks in front of stalls and gonfabs that were filled with neatly arranged goods laid out on plastic

  blankets. The old man tapped his malfunctioning Ears™ and listened to the

  shouts of people trading goods in dozens of languages. He caught the

  trickling sound of flowing refuse and the harsh sucking sound of neatly

  dressed people walking through filth. He looked at his shoes and they were

  clean. The smell of the street was almost unbearable.

  The old man approached a squat wooden stall and waited. A large man

  wearing a flamboyant, filthy pink shirt soon appeared. The man shook his

  great head and wiped his calloused hands on a soiled rag. “What can I do

  for you, Drew?” he said.

  “LaMarco,” said the old man, “I need a used Immersion System. Late

  model with audiovisual. No olfactory.” He tapped his Eyes™. “Mine are

  beyond repair, even for me.”

  365

  DANIEL H. WILSON

  LaMarco ran a hand through his hair. “You’re not still living with that . . .

  thing, are you?”

  Receiving no reply, LaMarco rummaged below the flimsy wooden counter.

  He dropped a bundle of eyeglasses and ear buds onto the table. One lens was

  smeared with dried blood.

  “These came from a guy got zipped by the militia last week,” said LaMarco.

  “Almost perfect condition, but the ID isn’t wiped. You’ll have to take care

  of that.”

  The old man placed a plastic card on the table. LaMarco swiped the card,

  crossed his arms, and stood, waiting.

  After a pause, the old man resignedly removed his glasses and ear buds and

  handed them to LaMarco. He shuddered at the sudden sights and sounds of

  a thriving slum.

  “For parts,” he coaxed.

  LaMarco took the equipment and turned it over delicately with his large

  fingers. He nodded, and the transaction was complete. The old man picked

  up his new Immersion System and wiped the lenses with his coat. He slid the

  glasses onto his face and inserted the flesh-colored buds into his ears.

  Cleanliness and order returned to the slums.

  “Look,” said LaMarco, “I didn’t mean anything by—”

  He was interrupted by the violent roar of airship turbines. Immediately, the

  old man heard the smack-smack of nearby stalls being broken down. Gonfabs

  began to deflate, sending a stale breeze into the air. Shouts echoed from

  windowless buildings. The old man turned to the street. Merchants and

  customers clutched briefcases and ran hard, their chiseled faces contorted

  with strange, fierce smiles.

  “Go,” hissed LaMarco.

  The whine of turbines grew stronger. Dust devils swirled across the

  promenade. LaMarco flipped the wooden countertop over, picked up the

  equipment-filled crate, and cradled it in his powerful arms.

  “Another raid,” he huffed, and lumbered off through a dark gap between

  two buildings.

  The old man felt wary but calm. When a massive, dead-black sheet of

  cloth unfurled impossibly from the sky, he was not surprised. He turned and

  another sheet dropped. A swirling black confusion of sackcloth walls

  366

  THE NOSTALGIST

  surrounded him. He looked straight up and saw that the convulsing walls

  stretched for miles up into the atmosphere. A small oval of dome light

  floated high above. The old man heard faint laughter.

  The militia are here with their ImmerSyst censors, he observed.

  Two black-clad militiamen strode through the twisting fabric like ghosts.

  Both wore lightly actuated lower-extremity exoskeletons, the word LEEX

  stenciled down the side of each leg. Seeing the old man standing alone, they

  advanced and spread out, predatorily.

 
; A familiar insignia on the nearest officer’s chest stood out: a lightning bolt

  striking a link of chain. This man was a veteran light-mechanized infantryman

  of the Auton Conflicts. Six symmetric scars stood out on the veteran’s cheeks

  and forehead like fleshy spot welds.

  A stumper attached its thorax to this man’s face some time ago, thought the old man. The machine must have been lanced before its abdomen could detonate.

  “This your shack?” asked the scarred veteran.

  He walked toward the old man, his stiff black boots crunching through a

  thick crust of mud mixed with Styrofoam, paper, and shards of plastic and glass.

  “No.”

  “Where’d you get that ImmerSyst?” asked the other officer.

  The old man said nothing. The veteran and the young officer looked at

  each other and smiled.

  “Give it here,” said the veteran.

  “Please,” said the old man, “I can’t.” He clawed the Immersion System

  from his face. The flowing black censor walls disappeared instantly. He

  blinked apprehensively at the scarred veteran, shoved the devices deep into

  his coat pockets, and ran toward the alley.

  The veteran groaned theatrically and pulled a stubby impact baton from

  his belt.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s make this easy.” He flicked his wrist and the dull black instrument clacked out to its full length. With an easy trot, he came up behind the old man and swung the baton low, so that it connected with the back of his

  knees. The impact baton convulsed and delivered a searing electric shock that

  buckled the old man’s legs. He collapsed onto his stomach and was still.

  Then he began to crawl with his elbows.

  Have to make it out of this alive, he thought. For the boy.

  367

  DANIEL H. WILSON

  The veteran pinned the old man with a heavy boot between the shoulder

  blades. He lifted his baton again.

  A sharp, alien sound rang out—low and metallic and with the tinny ring

  of mechanical gears meshing. It was not a human voice.

  “Stop!” it said, although the word was barely recognizable.

  The boy strode into the clearing. The old man, without his Eyes™ or

  Ears™, noticed that the boy’s legs were not quite the same length. He

  abruptly remembered cobbling them together from carbon fiber scavenged

  from a downed military UAV. Each movement of the boy’s limbs generated