by Bruce Bethke
“Even better, he’s got the money from Amber already. It’ll be credited to our account tomorrow.”
I was impressed. “That’s fast.”
“You think that’s fast? Amber’s new interface hardware is already en route. We should get delivery around noon tomorrow.”
Something bothered me about that. I took another bite ol pizza, ruminated and masticated. “Excuse me,” I finally said “What’s the point of all this financial Mickey Mouse if we had to go and give Amber our address?”
LeMat grinned: a rather disgusting cheesy-and-tomato saucy sight. “No, what we gave Amber was a mail-drop. She sent the hardware there; one of the Don’s boys picked it up and relayed it to us. For Amber to trace the package she’d have to get UPS and Federal Express to cooperate with each other, and she’d have an easier time getting the Mossad and PLO to double-date.”
I finished my slice of pizza, licked the sauce off my fingers, and wiped my hands on my pants. “So,” I said at last. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”
LeMat put down his can of root beer and belched from the bottom of his heart. “Damn right it is!”
I looked at him, sighed, and finally decided to drop all pretense and go for it. “I’m scared, man. Are you scared?”
He belched again. “Damn right I am!”
“I mean, this could all go up in our faces and land us neck-deep in dinosaur shit. That ever occur to you?”
LeMat had run out of gas. “Yeah. It’s a sure cure for narcolepsy. I had absolutely no trouble staying awake or sweating bullets last night.”
I nodded. “Thought so.” We both went silent. Another thought crept in edgewise in that vulnerable moment and sent all the little vestigial hairs on the back of my neck leaping to ice-cold attention.
“Say, Gunnar. You met Don Vermicelli in Heaven, right?” LeMat nodded. “Uh, while you were there, you didn’t happen to, er, spot Eliza hanging around the place, did you?”
LeMat went white. “Eliza? I thought she was dead.”
“She got better.”
LeMat dropped the slab of pizza he’d been working on, put his chin in his greasy palm, and looked at me like a deer trying to outstare the oncoming headlights. “Is she mixed up in this?”
I nodded.
LeMat sagged in his seat like a sack of old potatoes. “Oh, Lordy.” He sighed. “Momma always told me my sinful ways would catch up with me.”
The original plan had been to move some of my furniture to the office after supper. The news of Eliza’s resurrection got LeMat so upset, though, that we decided to put off moving until the next morning. LeMat went home to chug shots of Maalox. I looked at my computer—which was disassembled for moving—decided I didn’t feel like putting it back together for one night, and went upstairs to spend a pleasant evening with Mom.
When that proved impossible, I went back to the basement, popped Dress For Conformity into my ReadMan, and jumped to—
Chapter 9: The Cyberpunk Modality
The origins of the word cyberpunk can be traced back to at least 1980, if not further. As it is now the year 2005, it is perhaps time to admit that cyberpunk is no longer a radical vision of the future, but rather a marketing label, and more importantly, a fashion modality, every bit as strict in its own way as the blue-suit-and-wingtip look of IBM or the propellor-beanie-and-Rockport style of Hewlett-Apple.
With that understood, it becomes easy to distill the parameters of the cyberpunk style. To wit:
social nonconformity, as expressed through unusual hairstyles
technological awareness, as expressed through body piercings and prosthetic implants
sullen stupidity, as evidenced by the renewed popularity of psychedelic drugs
in-your-face outrage, as expressed through popular music and personal audio
Ignoring for the moment the obvious dangers of Item #3 (as has been proven repeatedly, drugs cannot make you smarter or sexier, they can only make you stupider and poorer) as well as the complete failure of Item #4 (it’s hard to believe in music as an expression of social outrage when the Butthole Surfers’ “Goofy’s Concern” is the theme music for a major Nike television ad campaign), the obvious place to start is with Items #1 and #2.
Granted, an unusual hairstyle is roughly equivalent to tattooing the word “geek” on your forehead. But most people nowadays are too polite to point and laugh, so what the hell, go for it.
As for body piercings, the medical dangers of poking holes in your skin have long been known. Fortunately, a wide array of clip-on “piercings” and self-adhesive “implants” are now on the market for those who want to fit in with a hi-tech trendoid culture at work and still retain a modicum of sanity for evenings and weekends. If you do opt for actual body piercings, though, and you live in one of the northern states that sees severe static electricity conditions in the winter, please be advised that shuffling across a wool carpet and then accidentally contacting ground through your eyebrow ring is an experience you will not soon forget.
CAUTION: If you choose to accessorize the cyberpunk fashion statement with items from other modalities, be very careful. Nipple piercings and chain mail shirts, for example, are widely reported to be a disastrous combination.
11: JACK GETS REALLY WIRED
My 7 A.M. wake-up call from the fax machine was right on time. LeMat showed up around eight with his truck and a bag of bagels, and by eleven o’clock we had the first load of stuff carted over to CompuTech World Headquarters and had successfully completed our first spelunking expedition into the Basement That Time Forgot, which netted us three matching blue plastic chairs, a worktable, a desk, and a talking coffeepot that sang “Volare” when the brew cycle was done. The floor on the east end of our office, which we’d both assumed to be terrazzo yesterday, turned out to be several years’ accretion of pigeon guano when seen in direct sunlight. We decided we had space enough to work around that, but the discovery did bring LeMat’s 5mm air pistol out of hiding, and he wasted the next half-hour blasting holes in the ceiling tiles every time he thought he heard a coo.
Around 11:30 we took a break, and went down to street level and over to the deli in the next block to grab some sandwiches. On the way back we ran into Inge Andersson, the CPA from the fourth floor, again. She was out for a power walk in her skirt, nylons, and white tennis shoes, and pretended not to recognize us.
As promised, the courier carrying Amber’s new interface hardware showed up promptly on the dot of noon. The box was large enough to hold my microwave oven, but apparently quite lightweight, considering the way the courier was tossing it around. We managed to keep ourselves under control until she left the building, then—
“It’s Christmas Time!” LeMat shouted. We tore into that box like a couple of eight-year-olds. “Look! Look!” LeMat pulled something out of the styrofoam ghost farts and waved it in the air. “New featherweight high-definition video goggles!”
I plunged my arms into the box and came up with the next thing. “Look! Look! New skintight elbow-length piezoelectric datagloves!”
LeMat brushed a shower of styro noodles on the floor, and grabbed the corner of a clear plastic bag that appeared. “Look! Look!” He paused and took a closer squint at it. “A complete EKG harness and an array of scalp electrodes!”
“Look,” I said, as I pulled out something that turned out to be connected daisy-chain fashion to about four other things. “A stereo headset with six-axis mercury head-positioning sensors and multiplex short-range wireless network link?”
“Look.” LeMat held up the next item at arm’s length, between two fingers. “Knee-length skin-tight piezoelectric data socks.” The socks were connected to more fabric. “Oo, and matching data underwear, too. Thank you, it’s just what I’ve always wanted.”
“Oh, look,” I said dully as I fished a large, heavy, cylindrical object out from where it’d settled into the bottom of the box. “It’s a—a—What the hell is it?”
“Look Jack,” LeMat asked, “
did you see anything that even vaguely resembled instructions?”
I jerked a thumb at the thick brown envelope labeled “Read Me First” that was sitting right where I’d tossed it, in the garbage can. “Sorry. Reflex.”
LeMat retrieved the envelope and tore it open. And with that, we settled down and set everything down, then sat down to the serious job of figuring out just what exactly it was we had.
“Hmm,” LeMat said as he leaned back in his plastic chair, looked up from the documentation, and stroked his chin. “Did you know this thing came out of MDE’s biomedical division?”
“I didn’t even know MDE had a biomedical division.” I gave up trying to figure out the three interface cards I’d found in bubble wrap in the bottom of the box, set them on the floor—not an easy maneuver, as I was sitting in a plastic chair with my feet up on the table—and turned my attention to the CD media.
“But the kicker is,” LeMat went back to what he was reading and underscored a line with his finger, “the interface has clearly not passed any FDA tests. Hasn’t even been submitted for trials, as far as I can tell.”
I spun the CD on my finger and watched the way the sunlight prismed off the surface. Of course, I’d have learned a lot more about the software if LeMat had let me pop it into my computer and scan it, but he’d absolutely forbidden me to get the disk anywhere near my computer until after he’d finished reading the manuals. I tried to tell him I had the best virus traps and scanning utilities talent could bootleg, but no-o—
“What this means to us,” LeMat went on, since I hadn’t asked, “is that this interface is doubly illegal. Not only is it stolen—I’m convinced of that now—but even if it wasn’t, the maker couldn’t legally let humans use it. It’s not safe.”
I slipped the CD back into its case, looked at LeMat, and shrugged. “So? Are we going to let a little thing like that stop us now?”
LeMat closed the manual, thought it over a minute, and sat up straight in his plastic chair. “Nope.” He pointed at the pile ol bubble wrap on the floor. “Hand me those interface cards, would you?”
It took us the rest of the afternoon to get the interface cards installed in my computer, run the software through my virus filters, and get everything installed and configured. After that we spent another hour or so running the configured software through every kind of destruction test we could think of, just to see if there were any logic bombs or hostile behaviors hidden deep within the working code. Only after we were satisfied that everything was working correctly did we start messing around with the biological side of the interface. That, of course, entailed a five-minute argument about who got to try it first, but we eventually settled that by employing a binary metallic decision device. In other words, we flipped a coin. I won.
The piezoelectric datagloves turned out to be made of some sort of really interesting material. Black, lightweight, feeling kind of like a cross between Spandex and 200-grit sandpaper, they went up over the elbows, clung and conformed lo the skin, and after a few minutes of wear I didn’t even notice I hat I had them on, except that my skin was now glittering and black. As a test, LeMat dropped a dime on the floor. I had absolutely no trouble picking it up.
LeMat laughed. “Quite a far cry from the old data hockey gauntlets, huh?”
I smiled back at him. “Have some more money you want to drop? Maybe a twenty this time? Just as a test, of course.”
“Of course.” He laughed, but kept his wallet in his pants.
Next, I doffed my red high-top tennies and white sweat socks, and tried on the datasocks. Like the gloves, they went up over my knees, and after a few minutes seemed more like a second skin than a piece of clothing.
LeMat put down the manual he was flipping through. “There doesn’t seem to be any reason to not put your shoes back on,” he said. “It shouldn’t affect anything.”
I shook my head. “No. Don’t want to. I can’t explain it, but these things feel—really good. Shoes would ruin it.”
LeMat nodded. “I know what you mean. I felt the same way the first time I tried support hose.”
I took a few tentative hops and skips around the wooden floor. The datasocks seemed to give me really good traction, if nothing else. “Okay, what’s next?”
LeMat sorted through the pile of stuff on the table and selected another poly bag full of black fabric. “Take off your shirt.” He ripped the plastic open.
“Oh, goody.” I pulled my t-shirt tails out of my pants and hauled the shirt up and over my head. “Is it a data hairshirt?”
“No, more like—” His voice stopped.
“Gunnar?” I finished getting my t-shirt off and threw it on the table. “Gunnar, what’s wrong?”
“Jack?” he said softly. “You’d better come have a look at this.” I skipped over beside him and looked at the glittering black thing he’d taken out of the bag. It wasn’t a datashirt.
It was more like a data bra.
“You know,” I said, “I think you’re right. You are the older and more experienced partner. I think you should try it, first.”
LeMat shook his head. “Nonsense, Jack. You won the toss fair and square. I wouldn’t want to take the thrill of this experience away from you.” He handed the black bra to me.
I smiled my disarming best. “But as my friend, I would be honored if you would accept this small token of my appreciation for all our years of friendship. Please, you deserve it more than I do.” I tried to push the bra back into his hands.
LeMat resolutely crossed his arms and refused to take it. “Well, you can be honored until the cows come home,” he said, “but I am not gonna wear that. So either you put it on, or you call Amber right now and tell her the deal’s off.”
I looked at him. He was serious. I looked at the data bra. It seemed more like something out of the Victoria’s Secret catalog than a piece of computer hardware. I looked out the east window at the darkened windows of the offices on the eighth floor of the Lumber Exchange building across the street. Well, it was 6:30 on a Friday, after all.
“Okay,” I said. “But lock the door. And promise me, tomorrow we put curtains on those windows.”
LeMat nodded solemnly. “I promise.”
He did more than promise. He had to help me with the hooks. I’d only taken these things off before, never had to put one on. “Thank you,” I said when it was all adjusted and everything. “I just want you to know, it takes a true friend to inflict humiliation like this, and I only hope that someday I will be able to repay the favor. Now, what’s left?” I hopped over to the table where we’d piled everything and started strapping on parts. LeMat picked up the manual and flipped to a checklist.
“Audio headset?” he asked.
“Check.”
“Cranial positional sensors?”
“Check.”
“Gross motion sensors?”
“Check.”
“Video goggles?”
“Check.”
“Dorsal fiberoptic harness?”
“Hold it.” I was still fiddling with the video goggles. They were featherweight, yes, but when I had them on, I couldn’t see a damned thing. I heard LeMat riffling through pages.
“There’s a transparency control,” he said. “Right side, just forward of your temple. Down is clear.”
I found the control and slid the button down. “Got it.” I could see again.
“Okay.” LeMat went back to the manual and found the checklist again. “Uh, dorsal fiberoptic harness?”
I felt my elbows, ribs, knees, and behind my ears. The components of the interface were all hooked together with whisker-thin optical fibers that really didn’t seem to be strong enough but apparently worked. “Check.”
“Network transceiver belt?”
“Check.”
“Datashorts?”
“What?”
LeMat lowered the checklist, peered over the top of it at me, and then did the back-and-forth glances bit a few times. “Oh dear,” he said. �
�We missed a piece.” He shuffled over to the shipping box on the floor, rooted around in the styrofoam noodles until he found another poly bag, and threw it to me. “Here. Drop your pants and put these on.”
I tore the plastic bag open, although I really didn’t need to do that to see what was in it: a black, sparkling, bikini thong. “Oh, the things I go through for my career,” I muttered as I turned my back to LeMat, dropped my jeans and boxer shorts, and struggled into the thong. Amazingly, the fabric did stretch enough to keep me decent. I also discovered that the datasocks had sags in them; I gave them another tug, and this time they came up to mid-thigh. After I’d reconnected the optic fibers to the transceiver belt, I turned around. “Well? How do I look?”
LeMat managed to keep a straight face for almost ten whole seconds. “Like the most high-tech drag queen on the planet!” He sputtered once, snickered twice, dropped the manual, and just about collapsed on the floor, laughing so hard the tears flowed like rain gutters and his face turned a deep apoplectic red.
“Thank you very much,” I said as I minced over to where he lay laughing on the floor and fought the urge to kick him in the ribs. “I just want you to know that if this is a heart attack, you are going to die.”
LeMat wiped the tears from his eyes, fought for control of himself, then caught another glimpse of me and collapsed in sputters and snickers again. “Sorry, Jack,” he said when he’d just about laughed himself out. “But now I understand why Amber—snort!—thought she’d have to pay you a million. You should’ve held out for two!”
I waited until he’d gotten it all out of his system, then helped him back to his feet. “Okay, so what’s left?”
“Some darling red stilletto heels. You’ll—”
“What?”
“Just kidding.” LeMat picked up the EKG harness. “Next, we hook you up with this and the scalp electrodes. It’s not really part of the data interface. It’ll just let me monitor your vital signs, in case there are any problems.”
I thought the implications of that through for a bit, then looked LeMat straight in the eyes. “Level with me, Gunnar. You’ve read all the manuals. Is there a chance this thing will get me killed?”