From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red
Date: 7 Feb 92 19:36:55 GMT
The woman slouched down on the tape-scabbed barstool,
rolling a thin film of draft Kirin around the bottom of her glass.
Things were getting interesting again, she thought, listening to
the hum of conversation swirling around the Chat. WWWA types, the
occasional street samurai bitching about standards and practices--
yeah, things were definitely looking up--
"Red."
She didn't bother to turn around. "Gideon."
"Long time no see, babe."
And now she did move, enough to see the slick-faced gajin
sitting down on the next barstool. "Watch your ass," she said
conversationally. "There's a lot of shit sticking to these
things."
Gideon frowned, apparently trying to levitate. "I thought
I'd catch you in here," he started.
"Yeah, yeah." She knew what he wanted--another report.
"I've been busy."
"So I've heard. You handled the Seikagaku deal for
Genconic--very nice." He let a delicate silence fall.
Christ. All she wanted to do was sit there and drink, try to
forget about the week from hell. "Okay," she sighed, "I've got
something put together--I can upload it in four days."
"One."
"No fucking way. Three."
"Fine."
Her eyes shifted, glinting. Gideon almost jerked back from
the look. "That was too quick," she said, her voice
deceptively soft. "What's goin' on?"
The man shrugged, thin shoulders barely moving the heavy
wool of his coat. "There's a lot of business coming down the line.
We want to make sure we get something in while we can, and you're
our best contact."
She grunted, nodding. The last report had come out of
sunny LA--this time, she wanted to stick a little closer to the
Sprawl. Maybe the one about the stripper. . .
"I'll get it to you in three days. Tell your people to
look for it--if I have to reload, your ass is new-mown grass."
Gideon gave her a spastic jerk that passed for a nod.
"What's it called?"
"Flameout." The woman stood up, shrugging into a leather
coat that had seen better times. On the back, HOOSIER RED was
spelled out in worn felt letters. "Three days, man."
Gideon watched her walk out of the bar, stopping briefly in
the doorway to scan the crowd. Just another night at the Chat. . .
Yeah, right.
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: HOOSIER RED> Labyrinth
Date: 18 Feb 92 14:45:26 GMT
Another night in the Chatsubo. The sibilant hum of biz
flowed beneath the surface tension like white noise, outlining the
joeboys and hookers in aural neon. At the bar, Ratz swabbed a damp
rag over the scratched surface while nodding at the various
customers. He keep an eye on Zone's hookers, shifting from man to
man in their dance of flesh. Occasionally, a bodyguard would flex
a brand-new pectoral graft, occasionally a piece of biz would go
down. But this particular activity usually took place in the back.
In the back of the bar a semicircle of tables staked out
territory for the cowboys. Data thieves, they were the best of
their generation, a hustling aristocracy of criminals born and
raised in the nowhere place of the matrix. At her favorite table,
one of the cowboys drummed her fingertips on the tabletop, watching
the cheap tin ashtray jiggle in time to the beat.
_Where the hell WAS he,_ Hoosier Red wondered, glancing at
the doorway more often than she wanted to. Here she was--one of
the hottest data hijackers this side of the Sprawl, Surjancev Ltd's
main connection to fresh Sense/Net stim. Beloved of the Horsemen,
she thought with dour amusement, a regular mambo-dancer. And she
was still waiting on a clown.
"Hi, doll."
The back door, she thought with a sigh. _Of course._
"What kept you?" she asked, not bothering to look up.
"Hey, I've got biz to run, babe." And Bozo Madrid, Esquire
sat down, fluffing out his rainbow wig and adjusting the bald pate
for maximum reflective capability. His "Bozo Gone Bad" look, she
remembered--the bald pate alone could blind you in minutes. "Decks
to deliver, bugs to fix, the usual." He moved his leg against hers
casually, pressure nice and tight to remind her who his main
interest was. "Night City _needs_ me, hon."
"Yeah, I bet." Just as casually, Red moved away, giving
him a lazy once-over. A little over two meters tall, her hardware
artist customarily dressed in green and gold silks, the large gilt
codpiece between wiry thighs acting as a major accessory focus.
The circus makeup was thick and clean, just recently applied, she
judged. She remembered the feel of it smearing underneath her
fingers during a clinch. A big red smile streaking down her chin,
her throat, towards her breasts--
"Stop thinking dirty thoughts about me," Madrid growled.
"I want to be loved for my mind."
"Can't help it. Clowns turn me on," she replied, leering.
A group at the bar watched this exchange. "Too weird for
me," one of Lonny's whores said, clutching her john's arm in a
practiced grip.
The bartender shook his head in disagreement. "Herr
Madrid, he is an eccentric," Ratz said. "The makeup and circus
costume has become his world--they hide his face, but they also
protect it from the street. He prefers the absurdity of the clown
to reality."
"And he kicks the shit outta anybody who hassles him, too,"
one Chat regular said. "I heard some mean shit about Madrid, no
lie. He's not just Hoosier Red's hardware god--he's got a lot of
sidelines. Street samurai--"
"--free-lance dentist--" someone else opined.
"--spook work for the Coast Guard--"
"--runs proscribed biologicals for game shows--"
"--and makes a mean Vienna sausage casserole."
The group shuddered collectively. "And have you ever
wondered what's _really_ underneath that codpiece?" Ratz said
wisely. "Herr Madrid is known to keep a number of unusual toys
there."
"I know for a fact he's got a prosthetic, highly dangerous,
symbiotic and intelligent weenie," someone said drunkenly. "I
swear, I saw him plug it into a serial port once and start
downloading." The men winced.
Madrid glanced at the group gathered around the bar.
"They're telling the cyberdork story again," he said, sounding
quietly satisfied. He adjusted his codpiece with a studied
movement.
"Will you knock that off?" Red said irritatedly.
"No problem, babe." He chose to flash the group a smile,
exposing perfect teeth that concealed a range of arcane weapons.
"What's under here is dangerous enough."
Red rolled her eyes. "You wish."
"I know. And you know. And I know that you know. And you
know that I know that you know--"
Sighing, she leaned over and stuck her tongue in his mouth.
Anything to make him shut up.
A hyperstack, overlooking Tokyo Harbor, gleamed like a
fragmented diamond against grey static sky. The newest, the
hottest companies vied for officespace there, all wanting what they
saw as the Edge and hot for the outside that made them look like
they had it. The Edge was their favorite topic, Madrid mused,
briefly thinking of Red still asleep in the basement flat they
rented. Edge was hot, razoring, the laserlight of talent in the
neurotech fields, slick and poisonous as amateur cyberpunk writing.
And Yamujitsu was the newest, the hottest, and the hungriest,
moving in on anything they thought could give them leverage.
Madrid hadn't been surprised when Ralph Johnson, Yamujitsu gajin
executive in his grey silk suit and tasteful earring, had sought
him out for a deal.
"I've heard things about you, Mister Madrid," the man said.
"Impressive things. According to the street, you can build a
cyberdeck from a handful of rare earth and a few molars."
"Tangiers. We ran out of circuitboards," Madrid said
modestly.
"And your partner is equally impressive--Hoosier Red, the
lady with the interesting handle." Johnson favored him with a
smile. "Lifted an entire soap strand from Sense/Net without a
quiver, didn't she? Burnt IBM for their new stimsim design, has
unusual connections in the matrix, maintains the record for
surviving braindeath under black ice--"
"--and makes great julienne fries," Madrid finished
brightly, his gaze trailing off to the wall. Madrid was used to
these kinds of offices, although he wished sometimes that they
weren't all painted in that weird shade of Neo-Yuppie Puke. But
the offices were his home way from home, a pre-fab workplace that
changed with every deal. "Yeah, she's good. The best, even."
"Your woman?"
"You might say that."
"Ah." An arched eyebrow said it all. "I was
curious--there's also an unpleasant rumor going about, something
about how you stalked, killed, butchered, cooked and ate a rival
suitor for Miss Red's affections."
The clown didn't say anything. He just smiled.
"That doesn't bother my company, you know. My company
likes that kind of possessiveness. It's what going to make them
very, very rich. And it can make you--" Johnson chose his words
carefully. "Very, very well off."
"What about very, very rich?"
Johnson laughed. Madrid automatically scanned his
dentals--no implants, just a up-and-coming cavity. "That, you can
do on your own," he replied. "What I can do is give you a head
start. If you and Miss Red are up to the job."
Madrid knew they were--Johnson wouldn't have bothered
calling him otherwise. "I think we can handle it," he said,
honking his nose.
"This is big," Madrid said. "Big. Immense. Our combined
egos couldn't cover it, okay?" He tossed the chip down on the
workbench, feeling the power springing up from his floppy shoes.
He wanted to dance, sing, spritz unsuspecting passersby with his
trick carnation. "We're in on the ground floor, Red. Yamujitsu's
gonna owe us."
"I get the picture." Red was settling the dermatrodes
across her forehead, preparing for the preliminary run. The Hosaka
was humming away, scanning for possible surveillance or
interference. Standard prep, slipping in. "So I'm supposed to
buzz these coordinates--"
"Just buzz. Don't do anything. Johnson wants a scan of
the area, that's all."
She nodded, already thinking ahead. "So what am I looking
for?"
"An AI."
It was a slow, practiced movement, the way she slid the
trodes off, staring at him as if he'd just asked her to crack the
Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority's core. "Have you been sniffing
that greasepaint again?" she asked suspiciously. "You're seriously
telling me to buzz an AI?"
"You don't have to crack it--you don't even have to touch
it," he reassured her, and ducked to avoid the half-filled cup of
coffee she threw at him. "I'm serious, Red."
"So am I, Bozo." She pushed away the chip he had given her
with the coordinates. "I've done braindeath four times already.
I'm not going for a new record."
"But this isn't your average AI." Madrid dragged up a
temperfoam cushion and sat down. "According to Johnson, it's dead.
Non-conscious--something happened to the sentience program, wiped
it clean. Even its ICE is non-operative. It's just a very big,
very complex core."
"So he says." Red frowned. "It smells weird to me."
Bozo sniffed. "That's just my shoes."
She turned away to type in coordinates, scanned the
readout. "The Hosaka says that's a dead area. No activity, no AI,
nothing."
"You're kidding."
"See for yourself." She punched for the coordinates
representing the section of the matrix Johnson had asked them to
scan, shifting them into the tank demo. A series of strata were
sketched, holograms forming themselves into blank sections of
lattice. "The last cores there were the Lake Michigan University
Medical Center's system," Red said, studying the tank. "And those
were taken off-line over fifty years ago. Hell, they didn't even
have AIs back then."
"Tell me about it," Madrid said, fingering his carnation.
Shit, and that credit had looked so good, too. "Okay, forget about
it," he finally said. "I'll tell Johnson he got the wrong
coordinates or something--"
She puffed out her cheeks, letting the air sigh through
pursed lips. "No, wait a minute. Now I'm interested." She
smoothed the trodes, adjusted the antique McMahon sweatband for
maximum absorption, then nodded. "I'm gonna run it."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. It's probably nothing. And if there's something
there, well. . . Who wants to live forever, right?" She gave Bozo
a grin and an air kiss. "Okay. Hit me."
Cyberspace bled in from the cardinal points, a bit of
theatricality that included reality swirling away down a virtual
drain with a burp. _Nice_, she thought. _Must be my birthday
present._ The red Aztec pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission
Authority formed in front of her. She took her bearings from it,
punching high for the middle of the Sprawl and the tech areas
around Chicago.
She arrived at the coordinates.
_Uh, oh._
Something floated directly in front of her, almost too
transparent to be seen. She could only catch it in peripheral
bursts, a vague shape that her brain resolved into some kind of a
geometric shape. The very simplicity of the piece screamed
artificial intelligence--Red knew from experience that AIs didn't
get the concept of interior decorating. As she watched, shadows
shifted beneath the shape's facets, moving like smoke as she
approached.
I thought you said there wasn't going to be any ice, she
mouthed. Dimly, she could feel a cartridge being pressed into her
hand, moving down to push the cartridge into the cyberdeck's media
slot. Immediately, a clear shield sprang up around her.
_Something I picked up in Chiba,_ she heard. The shape seemed to
respond to this, the shadows churning faster now.
Goddamn, she thought, I'm being rumbled by an overgrown
AD&D piece. "I think it's got a lock on me," she heard herself
say. Red felt herself shifting in her seat, twisting away from her
mind's perception of the AI. "Too big, I'm jacking out--"
"Not yet." The words drifted across the net. "I think we
should talk, don't you?" And the immensity leaned in, shattering
the icebreaker and enclosing her like a lover's embrace.
Back in the apartment, alarms went off, and Madrid turned
just in time to see Red's EEG go flatline.
_And reality warped in upon itself, forming a mandala that
spun through the realm of space-time. Warp, fold, weaving itself
into something new._
Red found herself leaning against a glass window. She
looked down.
"Chicago." She recognized the Fuller domes in the
distance, stopping at the interzone of slum and highrise, a faint
puddle of blue to her left. The height, the view clued her
in--this was a simstim of the old Sears Building, now Sense/Net's
Mid-Axis headquarters. "This is Chicago."
"Also my home." Her attention snapped to the man standing
across from her. Perfectly ordinary, dressed in a suit style
popular at the turn of the century, he seemed to be a wraith
against the cool expanse of glass. Short, dark hair curled over a
pale face, making him look child-like, tousled. The real focus,
through, was his eyes--burning brown, volcanic flaring behind
old-fashioned eyeglasses. Immensity captured in two glowing
spheres. Red felt herself drown in those eyes, reflecting through
eternity hot and evermore, mirror against mirror to form the long
tunnel--
"No. If I wanted that, I would have taken you when you
entered the sector, and killed you." The man turned away, focusing
that intensity on the cityscape sprawled below them. "I need you
alive and well, Red. I knew you would come eventually."
"Me?"
"Or somebody like you. I expected it, you see. The
multinationals don't like having me loose in this lovely consensual
illusion they've created, so they've finally gathered their courage
and hired a cowboy to find me." The man closed his eyes, seemed to
concentrate. "Your name is Hoosier Red, you're twenty-five,
single, a high-priced data thief, your partner is Bozo Madrid--who,
by the way, is trying to resuscitate you as we speak--you
specialize in stealing infotainment data and software, you've never
been caught although Sense/Net would be delighted to have you
brainwiped--" His eyes opened abruptly. "And you're a Leo."
"Just barely," she said, uncomfortable. In response
to her unspoken question, he turned back. "Once upon a time, long
ago, my name was Browning. Now, it has changed, grown along with
the rest of me. You can call me Labyrinth."
"Fine." She leaned against the glass harder, feeling the
cool slick surface against her shirt sleeve. Too real--only an AI
could maintain this level of simstim. "So why did you grab me?"
"To talk. To find out what Ralph Johnson wanted you to
do."
There was a certain amount of loyalty she owed to her
employers, loyalty that prevented her from talking about a deal.
She glanced out the window again, saw how high up she was. How
easily the window could be broken if Labyrinth wanted it.
To hell with it. "I was supposed to buzz this sector, see
what was going on," she said easily.
"And?"
"That's it. Just buzz."
"I see." And Labyrinth smiled to himself. "I'm surprised
Johnson limited his first move to a simple reconnaissance mission.
I expected a little more creativity from him, considering your
talents."
"I don't normally get a lot of flattery from an AI," she
said, resisting a wild urge to bat her eyelashes.
"I'm not flattering you. Only the best cowboys would have
a chance of coming back with their neurons intact from this sort of
job."
"Which is?"
Labyrinth looked mildly surprised. "I thought it was
obvious. You see, Johnson wants you to erase me." And with that,
he disappeared.
_Just what I need,_ she muttered to herself. _A frigging
cliffhanger. . ._
Copyright 1992 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved. And yes,
this is deliberately humorous, okay? Flame me, and I'll sic Bozo
on you.
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red> Labyrinth, Part Two
Date: 19 Feb 92 14:43:56 GMT
HOOSIER RED - Labyrinth
Part Two
When we last left our heroine, she had been flatlined by a
mysterious AI calling itself Labyrinth. All this, after cutting a
deal with Yamujitsu Ltd. to scan a set of mysterious coordinates.
Now, Red and Bozo have to find out why Johnson and Yamujitsu want
Labyrinth erased. . .
Oooh, this is so exciting. . .
Red awoke to a rhythmic drumming, pain flaring up to the
beat.
_Thump_ The being that called itself Labyrinth, standing
against the glass panorama of Chicago. Calling her by name--
_Thump_ --telling her he had been waiting, expecting
someone like her--
_Thump_ --someone who had been sent to erase the
artificial intelligence programs that made him an entity--
_Thump_ --and then disappeared without so much as a
by-your-leave. God, she hated rudeness like that--
Hot clamp of a mouth, and air rattled down her throat.
Words floating over her, telling her to wake up, come back.
"Okay, already," she said feebly, waving off the blurry
image. It consolidated slowly into a clownface, hovering over her
like a particularly perverse angel. "Boze."
"Give the lady a cigar." He touched her face once,
carefully. "If you have to do this, please don't do it while I'm
around. It upsets me."
She had to laugh. The movement stitched hot pain through
her sternum, identifying the drumming--a CPR attempt. "Hey, no
problem," she promised him, struggling to sit up. "I'll try to
flatline only when you're in the john."
Blearily, she gazed around the room, at the trodes tossed
in the corner. Careless, that, she thought--those puppies cost a
fortune. Hot afternoon sunlight cut across the dusty floor,
seeming to paint it with lambent stripes of gold. She was reminded
of the Chicago stim, the old Sears Tower's observation deck flooded
with the same light. Dust motes dancing to the tune of Browning
motion. _Damn, I oughta flatline more often,_ she thought idly.
_Makes me real poetic._
"Red." She came back to the room, Madrid's arm around her
shoulders. The clownface was distorted now, sweated away in
places. She knew that if she could see her own face, she'd be able
to find the missing makeup. "Babe, what happened in there?" She
squeezed her eyes shut against the sunlight, trying to remember
everything. "Weird. Something very weird. I met
somebody--something, an AI. Called itself Labyrinth." Her eyes
opened almost automatically, striped brown irises meeting blue.
"It said Yamujitsu wanted to erase it. That's why we were hired, I
think. To track it down."
Madrid fired off a string of Spanish, mostly obscene. "I
should've known," he spat. "'Just for a pass,' he said. That
bastard." He added some other curses as he helped Red get up,
guiding her to a temperfoam cushion. "You stay here. I'm going
out--"
"No, Bozo."
"I'm not gonna kill him." And here he smiled, the tiny
fangs snapping out from the end of his incisors. She knew Madrid
had a series of tiny reservoirs implanted in his gums, reservoirs
which held a range of chemicals ready to be injected through those
fangs. Killer hallucinogens, mycotoxins, KCl for stopping the
heart, some stuff he wouldn't even tell her about. "I'm just gonna
talk to him. And maybe we'll grab a bite or two."
"Don't be dumb. He didn't know I was going to flatline."
"He should've bloody well guessed!"
"No. All I was supposed to do was buzz the thing, check
out the location. No danger in that." She struggled to sit up
straighter, watching the implants. "Think about it, babe--he's got
some kind of mystery intelligence on the net. It isn't one of the
loa, it isn't listed on Turing, and it's got to be causing him some
kind of trouble. Maybe he does want to erase it, and maybe he
doesn't exactly know how. So what does he do? He hires some pros,
expensive ones, and sends them in to scope it out
proper--background for the real push." Red shook her head. "If he
expected trouble, he would've warned you--he knows he'd never be
able to hire another cowboy if one died on his say-so. He probably
expected me to see a core or two, verify the position. Maybe it
would have reacted, maybe not, but he didn't expect anything major
even if it did notice little ol' me. Either way, he would've had
his information, we would've had our money, and everything would've
been fine.
"But Labyrinth moved first." She rubbed her chest, trying
to ignore the ache. "And grabbed me. It just wanted to talk--it
didn't want to kill me. That's why it let me go so fast." She
glanced around at her deck, at the LEDs blinking the time. "Three
minutes. Christ, was that all?"
Madrid growled deep in his silks. "Believe me, Red, it was
a frigging eternity out here." He locked gazes with her, letting
her know soundlessly what else it had been like.
"I know, babe," Red murmured. She cupped her hands around
the backs of his knees, kneading the sensitive flesh there. "But
Johnson's not worth it. Hurt him, and we're going to screw
Labyrinth. And I don't want to do that, not until I find out what
the hell's going on."
Madrid finally shrugged, the implants retracting. "Okay.
I won't butcher the shithead. Yet." He allowed himself to be
drawn down to her level. "However," he enunciated, "you're not
going back to those coordinates again unless I'm there with you."
"You're being a male chauvinist pig again," she chided him.
"And you love it, in your own retro-Steinem feminist way."
"It's kind of nice," Red admitted. "But I wasn't planning
on going back. Not until I did some homework, anyway." Idly, she
started undoing the fastenings for his silks, pulling at the cloth
gently until she had him exposed. Wanting the reassurance of skin
against skin, slick pressure telling her she was still alive. She
laid her hand flat against his chest, feeling for the steady beat
throbbing under her palm. "How do you feel about heading back? To
the Sprawl?" She grinned suddenly, dazzling even in the sunlight.
"Maybe to Chicago?"
Madrid glanced down at himself, a slow answering grin
spreading on the clownface. "And me without a thing to wear."
Next Time: The Mid-Axis and Dr. What.
Copyright 1992 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved. And yes,
this is supposed to be humorous, so don't flame me.
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red Returns with "Stars"
Date: 22 Jun 92 15:13:31 GMT
The woman blinked at the thin level of beer in her mug.
"Ratz," she said, not unkindly, "what the fuck is the matter with
this place? Summer comes, and suddenly it's dead."
"Everyone has dropped out for parts unknown, Fraulein Red,"
Ratz growled amiably, drawing another beer for the Chat's only
other customer. "I have seen a few Mechanics lately, the
occasional techrunner. That is all."
"Business sucks, huh?" She sipped at the beer, wondering
if she should reslot the packet she was transferring. A few
changes, cleaner code--it might be interesting. "Then we'll just
have to change that."
Star Quality
By Melanie Miller
_I remember. . ._
Ben Grayson opened his eyes. He had been dreaming about
Lara Scott in a scene from their latest movie--smooth, blond Lara,
and wasn't it surprising when the dreamscene moved beyond an R
rating into censored territory? His fingers slipping underneath
the velvet strap of her monogown, exploring the feel of silky skin.
And then--
_I remember. . ._
An image of textbooks on a battered desk. Grassy lawn,
with blue sky above it. It had the taste of old iron, dread and
anticipation sliding him out of sleep into polished fear.
He rolled over, waiting for the dream to fade. Sensory
bleedover, the doctors called it--uncontrolled feedback from the
subconscious. Lara called them "morning's little horrors," and Ben
had to agree. Except that it wasn't morning, and the dreams were
slowly getting worse.
He glanced at the bedside clock--7:30 PM. Time to get up,
get ready for the party. As Maximillian would say, it wouldn't do
to keep the head of a major Hollywood studio waiting. Of course,
Ben would never do something as rude as that--as one of the acting
elite of the 20's, he was under formal contract with Maximillian
Hiller, the agent of the decade. And a favorite subject of
Maximillian's (never Max--he hated diminutives) was how members of
the Hiller Group worked with the studios, not against them.
Even with its director's quasi-feudal attitude, everyone
wanted to belong to the Hiller Group. The masses that streamed
into Hollywood would be sifted regularly, fine psychological mesh
screening the waitresses and busboys for talent, and only the best,
the hungriest, would be admitted to the fold. That was one of
Maximillian's proudest claims--all of his clients were standouts in
one way or another. Professional, other agents said with envy.
Maximillian never had to cover up embarrassing pasts, arrange
special hospital stays, pay off local law enforcement. The Hiller
Group were actors first and foremost, dedicated to their craft.
And part of that craft was to project an image, Ben
remembered. He rolled out of bed, heading for a shower and the
transformation that turned him into Benjamin Grayson, Superstar.
_Get ready, boy. It's showtime._
He arrived at the party just late enough to make an
entrance. The eyes of the crowd--all people involved with the
Business--crawled over his skin agreeably, feather-light massage on
the ego. Something clicked inside his head and he went into
automatic pilot: nod here, kiss a cheek there, get into the groove
of things. Project.. He saw Maximillian with Lara and waved
before being drawn into conversation with a leather-skinned mogul's
wife. And when a director intercepted him with a not-so-subtle
film offer, Ben managed to catch Maximillian's eye.
"Grayson, my boy, good to see you," the agent said, cutting
into the conversation. Briefly, the actor mused that Maximillian
looked like the ideal parent--six feet tall, a strong, kindly face,
dark hair edged with gray at the temples. The only thing that
spoiled the image was his eyes, an odd shade of flat, cold blue.
"Enjoying yourself?"
"Naturally," Benjamin replied, glancing at Lara (I
remember) and faltering. "Jorge and I were discussing his next
picture," he said, as if to explain the break.
"Which Benjamin would be perfect for," Jorge added,
delighted to have Maximillian's attention. "The part was
practically written for him, but he keeps dodging me--"
"Which he is supposed to do," Maximillian said smoothly.
There was a new undertone to his words now, a polite aural ice.
"All business deals are done through me, as I'm sure you know."
Jorge immediately became apologetic. "I'm aware of that,"
he said quickly. "I simply wanted to run the idea past Benjamin--"
"Which you've done. Benjamin, why don't you escort Lara
around, while Jorge and I discuss his idea." Maximillian handed
the actress to Ben, then guided the director off to a corner.
Lara glanced after them, the demure expression melting into
a smile. "This is the third time he's handed me off while he sets
up a deal," she said, half-laughing. "I'm starting to wonder if I
should ask for a cut."
"I don't think you'll get it," Ben said dryly. "Remember,
babe, he's the top hustler in town."
"I like it that way. It makes me feel more secure." She
had a voice that had been described variously as soft, lilting,
honeyed. Tonight, Ben thought, it was elegantly sweet; champagne
and strawberries. "By the way, he has some work for us
afterwards."
Ben nodded, understanding. The host, and probably the
hostess. It was part of the job when you worked with the Hiller
Group. The dream floated into consciousness again, overlaying the
party. _I remember. . ._
"What's the matter?" Lara asked. She looked up into his
face, smile turning down at the corners. "You faded out for a
minute."
"Nothing." He shrugged the dream off, back into his
subconscious. "You want that drink?"
"Of course. Then we'll entertain the peons."
Two hours later, he took a break from the mingling. Drift
from one group to another, be witty, amusing--even if you were used
to it, it could get tiring after a while. Lara was still
downstairs chatting with people in the vast ballroom, and Ben
wanted a chance to be alone with the night sky, polluted as it was.
He leaned out on a second-floor balcony, tracking faint traces of
starlight that made it through the smog. Memories started bleeding
through again, subconscious fragments:
_I remember. . ._
_Another time, another place. Farther east, where people
only watched the stars on holovision, never thinking to become one
of them. Maximillian had come to the campus right after
graduation, where he met Tim McCarthy for the first time. Benjamin
felt like a ghost, watching Maximillian and the boy walking on the
campus's quadrangle. The sky had been blue, very clear, and the
sun had been warm on their shoulders as Maximillian explained how
the boy could make a great deal of money in the entertainment
industry._
_Tim insisted that he wasn't an actor--the commercial had
been his girlfriend's idea. He wanted to be an agricultural
researcher. Maximillian demurred--acting talent wasn't necessary,
not with the technological options at his command._
"You look lonely."
Not moving, Ben tried on a small grin that didn't seem to
fit. "Not really."
He glanced sideways. Lara's profile was framed, outlined
by the lights of downtown L.A. Classically beautiful. He tried to
come up with the right answer, something that would describe the
dreams he'd been having lately, but nothing seemed right. They
stood there in companionable silence, the cool night breeze
ruffling through their hair, before he said, "Do you ever remember
what it was like? Before?"
Lara sighed. "I don't think about it," she said. "You
shouldn't, either. It only confuses you."
"I know, but sometimes I can't help it. It's like I'm
being invaded by memories."
Lara shook her head, moving away from him. She didn't want
to talk about it, he knew. Lara was the ideal actress--calm,
competent, perfectly adjusted to the change in her life. She had a
magic that critics kept comparing to the screen greats--Gish,
Hepburn, Streep. Great implants. Lara was never confused. "Maybe
you should go see Dr. Berringer," she suggested, brusque. "Have
him take a look at you. You might need an adjustment."
Unconsciously, Ben reached up and touched the skin
underneath his right ear, massaging it with two fingers. That was
where they'd gone in, with the surgical probes. "Maybe," he
agreed.
_A small surgical procedure, the newest form of wetware,
and Tim would have the skills of the greatest thespians at his
fingertips, Maximillian said. The silicarbon circuits would
interface directly with his brain, a biocompatible network riding
the limbic ring. All he would have to do is think about the
network, and it would generate controlled emotional states in
response to incoming stimuli._
_You mean it's an artificial persona, Tim said, quiet.
He'd heard about the procedure from friends, horrified at first,
then fascinated. It wouldn't be me, just some software riding
around in my head._
_You make it sound so nefarious, Maximillian answered,
smiling. Like it's a form of mind control._
_Well, isn't it?_
_And this time, Maximillian did laugh, the father figure
amused by a fearful child. Of course not, he said. You would have
control over your every thought, your every mood. Your implant
would simply allow you access to a greater range of emotions, the
skills you would need to be a great actor. Think of it as a
built-in acting coach._
"Anyway, I came out here to find you," she continued.
"Maximillian's waiting for us upstairs."
"All right." Ben turned, willing the vagueness to be gone.
He took control again, the smooth persona clicking into reality.
_Turn up the charm, boy. It's showtime._
He dug his toes into the satin, thrusting harder. The
woman beneath him moaned, winding slippery legs around his hips,
whispering obscenities under her breath to urge him on. Across the
hall, he thought, Lara was probably doing the same thing with the
studio head, unless the man got into something kinky. Not
impossible, but Lara knew how to handle that.
He jerked again, and again, until it was finished.
Naturally, he made sure the woman came first--he could even hold
back until she had two orgasms, sometimes even three. After love
(because with him, it was love of a sort--wasn't that programmed
into the implants?), he slid off to the side, holding her. The
apre-sex comedown that women needed, he told himself. If you were
going to do a job, do it right.
Her breathing quieted, finally slowing to sleep's pace. In
the still room, he could feel other thoughts sliding up to him,
demanding notice. Maximillian had said this would happen, even
gave tips on how to avoid the bleedover. But tonight, Ben was too
tired to fight. He let the memories come, shivering under their
weight:
_Why me, Tim asked._
_Because you're the American ideal, Maximillian had said.
They want your type, your voice--they'll love you. Maximillian
smiled, the cool charm turned up a notch. And because it would
make us both a great deal of money, he added gently._
_Tim flushed There weren't many scholarships for aggie
scientists anymore, and he had been living on loans and side jobs.
And with graduation, the loans would start coming due._
_Five years with the Hiller Group and you would have the
money for your bills, for a graduate degree, whatever you want,
Maximillian said. Five years with us, and you will have financial
freedom for the rest of your life._
_In exchange for five years of slavery, Tim said, horribly
surprised at a sudden, tiny desire to believe Maximillian. An
artificial persona was interesting when you were sitting around
with friends in a safe dorm room, your mind still your own. The
thought of actually carrying something like that in your head--_
_I wouldn't call it slavery, Maximillian replied. It's
simply acting, taken to the ultimate degree._
The woman eased into sleep. Only then did he slip out of
bed, gathering his clothes and looking for a bathroom where he
could shower. Luckily, the bedrooms were connected with a palatial
bath. Soundproof door, he noted, closing it behind him. Good.
Lara was already there, washing herself at the bidet. She
turned, looking over her shoulder, and gave him a cheerful smile.
"How was it?"
"Not bad." Ben went through his clothes, hanging them on a
towel rack. "Better than last time. At least she was in pretty
good shape. Yours?"
Lara shrugged. "About the same. He likes to be on
bottom."
Ben grunted understanding, stepped into the shower to wash
off the woman's sweat. After a minute, Lara slipped in. "You
mind?"
"No." He handed her the soap, and received a sudsy
washcloth as a prize. Like cats on good terms, they washed each
other. Asexual, friendly.
He was incapable of feeling any real attraction for Lara,
wet and slick as she was. He was sure she felt the same
way--Maximilian had suggested that a romance between them wouldn't
be in their best interest. He reached down to turn off the water,
when a shadow appeared through the steam, watching them.
"Lovely," the studio head whispered above the water's hiss.
"Lovely, children."
Ben felt Lara freeze, next to him. Waiting for the next
suggestion, he thought disjointedly. _Sure, we do requests._
"I'd like to see a love scene." The man leaned up against
the sink, his eyes slipping over them through the moisture. "Now."
Compliantly, Ben straightened up. His indifference melted,
changed to desire. His need was reflected in her eyes, blue and
eager, as she rubbed up against him, the water from the shower no
longer her only wet. He grabbed her roughly, the way the studio
head wanted him to hold her, the water beading on their skin.
_It had been the money that finally convinced him. A
guaranteed $100,000 the first year; after that, the sky was the
limit. Whatever his talent could pull in--a million and up wasn't
impossible, they had said._
_What if nobody wanted to hire me, he had asked. The
administrative section of the Hiller Group just laughed.
Maximillian hasn't picked a loser yet, they told him. Don't worry.
You'll be fine._
_And he had. After the surgery, renamed Benjamin Grayson,
he had co-starred in a fluff sitcom. Neilsons went through the
roof--the public loved him. After that, it was a string of
steadily bigger movies, until he was signed as the star for his
current 3-D, American Players. Women walked up to him everywhere,
offering him their bodies, anything he desired. Men wanted to be
like him. He was successful, a star, just as Maximillian planned._
_And his memories of life as Tim McCarthy were dimming._
The sun was a faint shimmer over the Hills when he finally
got home. Good party, he thought, throwing his jacket over the
couch. Another one for the record books.
The events of the night, after the party--well, they didn't
involve him, not directly. The sex had started after his first
movie, with the producer and his wife. Grayson remembered it in a
clinical way--the quiet summons from Maximillian, being delivered
to the hotel by limo. Wrapped up like a birthday present, he
thought. It had been his first experience with a threesome, the
feel of male skin next to his own. Maybe that was when the dreams
began to bleed over into his conscious mind; the ghost of Tim
McCarthy screaming, he thought morbidly.
He had asked Maximillian about the sex once. These people
were important in the Business, the agent had explained, and wanted
intercourse with the godhead of entertainment. Contact with
beautiful bodies, nothing more. And it was part of their job to
supply that contact to the right people, he'd added. Every member
of the Hiller Group did it. Nothing new--actors and actresses had
been doing it for years. The implants was an improvement on the
situation, a way to protect themselves emotionally. Let the
implants carry you through, Maximillian had suggested before taking
him up to that first hotel room. They'll know what to do.
Still musing, he poured himself a glass of orange juice.
Standard morning ritual--orange juice, vitamin. More suggestions
from Maximillian. Thank God we're not shooting until noon, he
thought, shrugging off the rest of his clothes, standing in his
briefs in the middle of the living room. At least I can get some
sleep.
_He wanted to talk to Lara afterwards, but she had gone
straight home. Instead, Maximillian had been waiting downstairs
for him._
_Lara told me you've been having some problems, he said,
slipping into the father confessor role. Like to talk about it?_
_And for the first time since Ben started acting, he
didn't. He didn't want to talk to Maximillian Hiller, father
surrogate, chaperone, super agent. He wanted to work the memories
out on his own. But Maximillian wouldn't hear of it._
_I told you that might happen, he'd said easily, on the way
home. Your body's immunological system is simply reacting to the
implant. We'll have Dr. Berringer look at it tomorrow._
_I don't want him to, Benjamin had said._
_But Maximillian insisted. It'll only confuse you if you
allow this to continue, Benjamin, he said._
_My name is Tim, he said irrationally._
_Maximillian was silent for a moment. In this place and
time, your name is Benjamin. In two years, when your contract is
up, you may decide to go back to that name. The agent smiled, and
Ben felt chilled by that smile. Or you may prefer the one you have
now._
_No, I don't think so. But the words brought a strange,
deep confusion. His life seemed to be a series of facets, beads
strung on a chain. Somewhere, those facets had changed, become
something new that was called Benjamin Grayson. Did that make him
real? And what did that make Tim McCarthy? Unreal?_
_He could imagine the resurrection. The chain would snap,
oh yes.
_I can make the appointment for you this afternoon,
Maximillian said. Just a suggestion, of course._
_Dully, he nodded. Make the appointment._
The implants were such a little thing, they had said, right
after the operation. Just to carry you along. And they'd led him
into a new life, something that Tim McCarthy had never imagined.
And the strangers? Midnight blending of flesh. It was
another part of the life. Nothing personal, he could hear
Maximillian say--it was only the body.
Changing his mind, Ben carried the orange juice out to the
terrace, cool morning air marbling his skin. He looked over the
sleeping city and imagined them out there--the audience that wanted
him to be what he was _now,_ not the repository of someone they
didn't know.
Suddenly, he felt lonely, wishing for the memory of blue
sky again. Wanting a past he knew was his own. Knowing, somehow,
that it would never be there.
_Oh, I remember. . ._
Copyright 1991 by Melanie A. Miller. ALl rights reserved.
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red: Bozo and Me
Date: 22 Jun 92 15:19:14 GMT
Another night in the Chatsubo. The sibilant hum of biz
flowed beneath the surface tension like white noise, outlining the
joeboys and hookers in aural neon. At the bar, Ratz swabbed a damp
rag over the scratched surface while nodding at the various
customers. He keep an eye on Zone's hookers, shifting from man to
man in their dance of flesh. Occasionally, a bodyguard would flex
a brand-new pectoral graft, occasionally a piece of biz would go
down. But this particular activity usually took place in the back.
In the back of the bar a semicircle of tables staked out
territory for the cowboys. Data thieves, they were the best of
their generation, a hustling aristocracy of criminals born and
raised in the nowhere place of the matrix. At her favorite table,
one of the cowboys drummed her fingertips on the tabletop, watching
the cheap tin ashtray jiggle in time to the beat.
_Where the hell WAS he,_ Hoosier Red wondered, glancing at
the doorway more often than she wanted to. Here she was--one of
the hottest data hijackers this side of the Sprawl, Surjancev Ltd's
main connection to fresh Sense/Net stim. Beloved of the Horsemen,
she thought with dour amusement, a regular mambo-dancer. And she
was still waiting on a clown.
"Hi, doll."
The back door, she thought with a sigh. _Of course._
"What kept you?" she asked, not bothering to look up.
"Hey, I've got biz to run, babe." And Bozo Madrid, Esquire
sat down, fluffing out his rainbow wig and adjusting the bald pate
for maximum reflective capability. His "Bozo Gone Bad" look, she
remembered--the bald pate alone could blind you in minutes. "Decks
to deliver, bugs to fix, the usual." He moved his leg against hers
casually, pressure nice and tight to remind her who his main
interest was. "Night City _needs_ me, hon."
"Yeah, I bet." Just as casually, Red moved away, giving
him a lazy once-over. A little over two meters tall, her hardware
artist customarily dressed in green and gold silks, the large gilt
codpiece between wiry thighs acting as a major accessory focus.
The circus makeup was thick and clean, just recently applied, she
judged. She remembered the feel of it smearing underneath her
fingers during a clinch. A big red smile streaking down her chin,
her throat, towards her breasts--
"Stop thinking dirty thoughts about me," Madrid growled.
"I want to be loved for my mind."
"Can't help it. Clowns turn me on," she replied, leering.
A group at the bar watched this exchange. "Too weird for
me," one of Lonny's whores said, clutching her john's arm in a
practiced grip.
The bartender shook his head in disagreement. "Herr
Madrid, he is an eccentric," Ratz said. "The makeup and circus
costume has become his world--they hide his face, but they also
protect it from the street. He prefers the absurdity of the clown
to reality."
"And he kicks the shit outta anybody who hassles him, too,"
one Chat regular said. "I heard some mean shit about Madrid, no
lie. He's not just Hoosier Red's hardware god--he's got a lot of
sidelines. Street samurai--"
"--free-lance dentist--" someone else opined.
"--spook work for the Coast Guard--"
"--runs proscribed biologicals for game shows--"
"--and makes a mean Vienna sausage casserole."
The group shuddered collectively. "And have you ever
wondered what's _really_ underneath that codpiece?" Ratz said
wisely. "Herr Madrid is known to keep a number of unusual toys
there."
"I know for a fact he's got a prosthetic, highly dangerous,
symbiotic and intelligent weenie," someone said drunkenly. "I
swear, I saw him plug it into a serial port once and start
downloading." The men winced.
Madrid glanced at the group gathered around the bar.
"They're telling the cyberdork story again," he said, sounding
quietly satisfied. He adjusted his codpiece with a studied
movement.
"Will you knock that off?" Red said irritatedly.
"No problem, babe." He chose to flash the group a smile,
exposing perfect teeth that concealed a range of arcane weapons.
"What's under here is dangerous enough."
Red rolled her eyes. "You wish."
"I know. And you know. And I know that you know. And you
know that I know that you know--"
Sighing, she leaned over and stuck her tongue in his mouth.
Anything to make him shut up.
A hyperstack, overlooking Tokyo Harbor, gleamed like a
fragmented diamond against grey static sky. The newest, the
hottest companies vied for officespace there, all wanting what they
saw as the Edge and hot for the outside that made them look like
they had it. The Edge was their favorite topic, Madrid mused,
briefly thinking of Red still asleep in the basement flat they
rented. Edge was hot, razoring, the laserlight of talent in the
neurotech fields, slick and poisonous as amateur cyberpunk writing.
And Yamujitsu was the newest, the hottest, and the hungriest,
moving in on anything they thought could give them leverage.
Madrid hadn't been surprised when Ralph Johnson, Yamujitsu gajin
executive in his grey silk suit and tasteful earring, had sought
him out for a deal.
"I've heard things about you, Mister Madrid," the man said.
"Impressive things. According to the street, you can build a
cyberdeck from a handful of rare earth and a few molars."
"Tangiers. We ran out of circuitboards," Madrid said
modestly.
"And your partner is equally impressive--Hoosier Red, the
lady with the interesting handle." Johnson favored him with a
smile. "Lifted an entire soap strand from Sense/Net without a
quiver, didn't she? Burnt IBM for their new stimsim design, has
unusual connections in the matrix, maintains the record for
surviving braindeath under black ice--"
"--and makes great julienne fries," Madrid finished
brightly, his gaze trailing off to the wall. Madrid was used to
these kinds of offices, although he wished sometimes that they
weren't all painted in that weird shade of Neo-Yuppie Puke. But
the offices were his home way from home, a pre-fab workplace that
changed with every deal. "Yeah, she's good. The best, even."
"Your woman?"
"You might say that."
"Ah." An arched eyebrow said it all. "I was
curious--there's also an unpleasant rumor going about, something
about how you stalked, killed, butchered, cooked and ate a rival
suitor for Miss Red's affections."
The clown didn't say anything. He just smiled.
"That doesn't bother my company, you know. My company
likes that kind of possessiveness. It's what going to make them
very, very rich. And it can make you--" Johnson chose his words
carefully. "Very, very well off."
"What about very, very rich?"
Johnson laughed. Madrid automatically scanned his
dentals--no implants, just a up-and-coming cavity. "That, you can
do on your own," he replied. "What I can do is give you a head
start. If you and Miss Red are up to the job."
Madrid knew they were--Johnson wouldn't have bothered
calling him otherwise. "I think we can handle it," he said,
honking his nose.
"This is big," Madrid said. "Big. Immense. Our combined
egos couldn't cover it, okay?" He tossed the chip down on the
workbench, feeling the power springing up from his floppy shoes.
He wanted to dance, sing, spritz unsuspecting passersby with his
trick carnation. "We're in on the ground floor, Red. Yamujitsu's
gonna owe us."
"I get the picture." Red was settling the dermatrodes
across her forehead, preparing for the preliminary run. The Hosaka
was humming away, scanning for possible surveillance or
interference. Standard prep, slipping in. "So I'm supposed to
buzz these coordinates--"
"Just buzz. Don't do anything. Johnson wants a scan of
the area, that's all."
She nodded, already thinking ahead. "So what am I looking
for?"
"An AI."
It was a slow, practiced movement, the way she slid the
trodes off, staring at him as if he'd just asked her to crack the
Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority's core. "Have you been sniffing
that greasepaint again?" she asked suspiciously. "You're seriously
telling me to buzz an AI?"
"You don't have to crack it--you don't even have to touch
it," he reassured her, and ducked to avoid the half-filled cup of
coffee she threw at him. "I'm serious, Red."
"So am I, Bozo." She pushed away the chip he had given her
with the coordinates. "I've done braindeath four times already.
I'm not going for a new record."
"But this isn't your average AI." Madrid dragged up a
temperfoam cushion and sat down. "According to Johnson, it's dead.
Non-conscious--something happened to the sentience program, wiped
it clean. Even its ICE is non-operative. It's just a very big,
very complex core."
"So he says." Red frowned. "It smells weird to me."
Bozo sniffed. "That's just my shoes."
She turned away to type in coordinates, scanned the
readout. "The Hosaka says that's a dead area. No activity, no AI,
nothing."
"You're kidding."
"See for yourself." She punched for the coordinates
representing the section of the matrix Johnson had asked them to
scan, shifting them into the tank demo. A series of strata were
sketched, holograms forming themselves into blank sections of
lattice. "The last cores there were the Lake Michigan University
Medical Center's system," Red said, studying the tank. "And those
were taken off-line over fifty years ago. Hell, they didn't even
have AIs back then."
"Tell me about it," Madrid said, fingering his carnation.
Shit, and that credit had looked so good, too. "Okay, forget about
it," he finally said. "I'll tell Johnson he got the wrong
coordinates or something--"
She puffed out her cheeks, letting the air sigh through
pursed lips. "No, wait a minute. Now I'm interested." She
smoothed the trodes, adjusted the antique McMahon sweatband for
maximum absorption, then nodded. "I'm gonna run it."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. It's probably nothing. And if there's something
there, well. . . Who wants to live forever, right?" She gave Bozo
a grin and an air kiss. "Okay. Hit me."
Cyberspace bled in from the cardinal points, a bit of
theatricality that included reality swirling away down a virtual
drain with a burp. _Nice_, she thought. _Must be my birthday
present._ The red Aztec pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission
Authority formed in front of her. She took her bearings from it,
punching high for the middle of the Sprawl and the tech areas
around Chicago.
She arrived at the coordinates.
_Uh, oh._
Something floated directly in front of her, almost too
transparent to be seen. She could only catch it in peripheral
bursts, a vague shape that her brain resolved into some kind of a
geometric shape. The very simplicity of the piece screamed
artificial intelligence--Red knew from experience that AIs didn't
get the concept of interior decorating. As she watched, shadows
shifted beneath the shape's facets, moving like smoke as she
approached.
I thought you said there wasn't going to be any ice, she
mouthed. Dimly, she could feel a cartridge being pressed into her
hand, moving down to push the cartridge into the cyberdeck's media
slot. Immediately, a clear shield sprang up around her.
_Something I picked up in Chiba,_ she heard. The shape seemed to
respond to this, the shadows churning faster now.
Goddamn, she thought, I'm being rumbled by an overgrown
AD&D piece. "I think it's got a lock on me," she heard herself
say. Red felt herself shifting in her seat, twisting away from her
mind's perception of the AI. "Too big, I'm jacking out--"
"Not yet." The words drifted across the net. "I think we
should talk, don't you?" And the immensity leaned in, shattering
the icebreaker and enclosing her like a lover's embrace.
Back in the apartment, alarms went off, and Madrid turned
just in time to see Red's EEG go flatline.
_And reality warped in upon itself, forming a mandala that
spun through the realm of space-time. Warp, fold, weaving itself
into something new._
Red found herself leaning against a glass window. She
looked down.
"Chicago." She recognized the Fuller domes in the
distance, stopping at the interzone of slum and highrise, a faint
puddle of blue to her left. The height, the view clued her
in--this was a simstim of the old Sears Building, now Sense/Net's
Mid-Axis headquarters. "This is Chicago."
"Also my home." Her attention snapped to the man standing
across from her. Perfectly ordinary, dressed in a suit style
popular at the turn of the century, he seemed to be a wraith
against the cool expanse of glass. Short, dark hair curled over a
pale face, making him look child-like, tousled. The real focus,
through, was his eyes--burning brown, volcanic flaring behind
old-fashioned eyeglasses. Immensity captured in two glowing
spheres. Red felt herself drown in those eyes, reflecting through
eternity hot and evermore, mirror against mirror to form the long
tunnel--
"No. If I wanted that, I would have taken you when you
entered the sector, and killed you." The man turned away, focusing
that intensity on the cityscape sprawled below them. "I need you
alive and well, Red. I knew you would come eventually."
"Me?"
"Or somebody like you. I expected it, you see. The
multinationals don't like having me loose in this lovely consensual
illusion they've created, so they've finally gathered their courage
and hired a cowboy to find me." The man closed his eyes, seemed to
concentrate. "Your name is Hoosier Red, you're twenty-five,
single, a high-priced data thief, your partner is Bozo Madrid--who,
by the way, is trying to resuscitate you as we speak--you
specialize in stealing infotainment data and software, you've never
been caught although Sense/Net would be delighted to have you
brainwiped--" His eyes opened abruptly. "And you're a Leo."
"Just barely," she said, uncomfortable. In response
to her unspoken question, he turned back. "Once upon a time, long
ago, my name was Browning. Now, it has changed, grown along with
the rest of me. You can call me Labyrinth."
"Fine." She leaned against the glass harder, feeling the
cool slick surface against her shirt sleeve. Too real--only an AI
could maintain this level of simstim. "So why did you grab me?"
"To talk. To find out what Ralph Johnson wanted you to
do."
There was a certain amount of loyalty she owed to her
employers, loyalty that prevented her from talking about a deal.
She glanced out the window again, saw how high up she was. How
easily the window could be broken if Labyrinth wanted it.
To hell with it. "I was supposed to buzz this sector, see
what was going on," she said easily.
"And?"
"That's it. Just buzz."
"I see." And Labyrinth smiled to himself. "I'm surprised
Johnson limited his first move to a simple reconnaissance mission.
I expected a little more creativity from him, considering your
talents."
"I don't normally get a lot of flattery from an AI," she
said, resisting a wild urge to bat her eyelashes.
"I'm not flattering you. Only the best cowboys would have
a chance of coming back with their neurons intact from this sort of
job."
"Which is?"
Labyrinth looked mildly surprised. "I thought it was
obvious. You see, Johnson wants you to erase me." And with that,
he disappeared.
_Just what I need,_ she muttered to herself. _A frigging
cliffhanger. . ._
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red: Labyrinth
Date: 22 Jun 92 15:19:26 GMT
She awoke to a rhythmic drumming, pain flaring red to the
beat.
_Thump_ The being that called itself Labyrinth, standing
against the glass panorama of Chicago. Calling her by name--
_Thump_ --telling her he had been waiting, expecting
someone like her--
_Thump_ --someone who had been sent to erase the
artificial intelligence programs that made him an entity--
_Thump_ --and then disappeared without so much as a
by-your-leave. God, she hated rudeness like that--
Hot clamp of a mouth, and air rattled down her throat.
Words floating over her, telling her to wake up, come back.
"Okay, already," she said feebly, waving off the blurry
image. It consolidated slowly into a clownface, hovering over her
like a particularly perverse angel. Hands were still on her chest,
feeling for the beat. "Is this your idea of foreplay? 'Cause if
it is, your technique needs some work."
"Oh, please." He touched her face once, carefully. "If
you have to flatline, please don't do it while I'm around. It
upsets me."
She had to laugh. The movement stitched hot pain through
her sternum, identifying the drumming--a CPR attempt. "Hey, no
problem," she promised him, struggling to sit up. "Next time, I'll
make sure you're in the john."
Blearily, she gazed around the room, at the trodes tossed
in the corner. Careless, that, she thought--those puppies cost a
fortune. Hot afternoon sunlight cut across the dusty floor,
seeming to paint it with lambent stripes of gold. She was reminded
of the Chicago stim, the old Sears Tower's observation deck flooded
with the same light. Dust motes dancing to the tune of Browning
motion. _Damn, I oughta flatline more often,_ she thought idly.
_Makes me real poetic._
"Red." She came back to the room, Madrid's arm around her
shoulders. The clownface was distorted now, sweated away in
places. She knew that if she could see her own face, she'd be able
to find the missing makeup. "Babe, what happened in there?" She
squeezed her eyes shut against the sunlight, trying to remember
everything. "Weird. Something very weird. I met
somebody--something, an AI. Called itself Labyrinth." Her eyes
opened almost automatically, striped brown irises meeting blue.
"It said Yamujitsu wanted to erase it. That's why we were hired, I
think. To track it down."
Madrid fired off a string of Spanish, mostly obscene. "I
should've known," he spat. "'Just for a pass,' he said. That
bastard." He added some other curses as he helped Red get up,
guiding her to a temperfoam cushion. "You stay here. I'm going
out--"
"No, Bozo."
"I'm not gonna kill him." And here he smiled, the tiny
fangs snapping out from the end of his incisors. She knew Madrid
had a series of tiny reservoirs implanted in his gums, reservoirs
which held a range of chemicals ready to be injected through those
fangs. Killer hallucinogens, mycotoxins, KCl for stopping the
heart, some stuff he wouldn't even tell her about. "I'm just gonna
talk to him. And maybe we'll have a bite or two."
"Don't be dumb. He didn't know I was going to flatline."
"He should've bloody well guessed!"
"No." The black feeling seemed to fade, replaced by
understanding. She struggled to sit up straighter, watching the
implants. "Think about it--Johnson's got some kind of mystery
intelligence on the net, and it's trouble. Maybe he does want to
erase it, and maybe he doesn't exactly know how. So he hires some
pros and sends them in to scope it out proper--background for the
real push." Bits clicked together, forming a picture. "If he
expected trouble, he would've warned you--he knows he'd never be
able to hire another cowboy if one died on his say-so. He figured
I'd spot the cores and verify position. Maybe it would have
reacted, maybe not, but he obviously didn't expect Labyrinth to
pull a major move on me. Either way, he would've gotten his
information, we would've gotten our money, and everything would've
been fine.
"But Labyrinth moved first." She rubbed her chest, trying
to ignore the ache. "And grabbed me. It just wanted to talk--it
didn't want to kill me. That's why it let me go so fast." She
glanced around at her deck, at the LEDs blinking the time. "Three
minutes. Christ, was that all?"
Madrid growled deep in his silks. "Believe me, Red, it was
a frigging eternity out here." He locked gazes with her, letting
her know soundlessly what else it had been like.
"I know, babe," Red murmured. She didn't allow herself to
revel in the sensation of being protected--somehow, it didn't seem
to fit her image. _But--oh, hell, I could really use it this
time._ Reaching out, she cupped her hands around the backs of his
knees, kneading the sensitive flesh there. "Johnson's not worth
it. Hurt him, and we're going to screw Labyrinth. And I don't
want to do that, not until I find out what the hell's going on."
Madrid finally shrugged, the implants retracting. "Okay.
I won't butcher the shithead. Yet." He allowed himself to be
drawn down to her level. "However," he enunciated, "you're not
going back to those coordinates again unless I'm there with you."
"You're being a male chauvinist pig again," she chided him.
"And you love it, in your own retro-Steinem feminist way."
"It's kind of nice," Red admitted. "But I wasn't planning
on going back. Not until I did some homework, anyway." Some
interior chemical balance shifted, from fear to desire. Idly, she
started undoing the fastenings for his silks, pulling at the cloth
gently until she had him exposed. Wanting the reassurance of skin
against skin, slick pressure telling her she was still alive. "How
do you feel about heading back? To the Sprawl?" She grinned
suddenly, dazzling even in the sunlight. "Maybe to Chicago?"
Madrid glanced down at himself, a slow answering grin
spreading on the clownface. "And me without a thing to wear."
Next Time: The Mid-Axis and Dr. What.
Copyright 1992 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved. You got
that?
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red
Date: 22 Jun 92 15:18:09 GMT
The woman slouched down on the tape-scabbed barstool,
rolling a thin film of draft Kirin around the bottom of her glass.
Things were getting interesting again, she thought, listening to
the hum of conversation swirling around the Chat. WWWA types, the
occasional street samurai bitching about standards and practices--
yeah, things were definitely looking up--
"Red."
She didn't bother to turn around. "Gideon."
"Long time no see, babe."
And now she did move, enough to see the slick-faced gajin
sitting down on the next barstool. "Watch your ass," she said
conversationally. "There's a lot of shit sticking to these
things."
Gideon frowned, apparently trying to levitate. "I thought
I'd catch you in here," he started.
"Yeah, yeah." She knew what he wanted--another report.
"I've been busy."
"So I've heard. You handled the Seikagaku deal for
Genconic--very nice." He let a delicate silence fall.
Shit. All she wanted to do was sit there and drink, try to
forget about the week from hell. "Okay," she sighed, "I've got
something put together--I can upload it in four days."
"One."
"No fucking way. Three."
"Fine."
Her eyes shifted, glinting. Gideon almost jerked back from
the look. "That was too quick, babe," she said, her voice
deceptively soft. "What's goin' on?"
The man shrugged, thin shoulders barely moving the heavy
wool of his coat. "There's a lot of business coming down the line.
We want to make sure we get something in while we can, and you're
our best contact."
She grunted, nodding. The last report had come out of
sunny LA--this time, she wanted to stick a little closer to the
sprawl. Maybe the one about the stripper. . .
"I'll get it to you in three days. Tell your people to
look for it--if I have to reload, your ass is new-mown grass."
Gideon gave her a spastic jerk that passed for a nod.
"What's it called?"
"Flameout." The woman stood up, shrugging into a leather
coat that had seen better times. On the back, HOOSIER RED was
spelled out in worn felt letters. "Three days, man."
Gideon watched her walk out of the bar, stopping briefly in
the doorway to scan the crowd. Just another night at the Chat. . .
Yeah, right.
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: Hoosier Red: Cycling the Night
Date: 22 Jun 92 15:18:38 GMT
Red spun the ashtray across the scarred table, watching it
slow, stop right before tumbling off the edge. She grinned
slightly, narrowing her eyes against the smoke.
It was turning out to be a weird night. The latest report
was delayed--frigging squeeze plays in the crumbling highstack
cubicle she was pleased to call her office was screwing up
everything. "Times like this, it isn't worth being a cowboy," she
muttered.
The man across the table laughed once. "You, a cowboy," he
said, accent guttural and Slavic. "That is, how you say,
stretching it a bit."
The grin faded, turning cold. "I don't hustle industrial
data," she said, leaning back in a casual move that said he wasn't
anything to fear. "I'm an infotainment jock. I run the same
risks that these guys do," and she shrugged towards the rest of
the Chat, where a series of wannabe joeboys did a complicated dance
around the tables. "Ice doesn't care if you're lifting data from a
zaibatsu or Sense/Net. It'll still fry your ass."
"A point." The man nodded. "Then I will tell my people
that I can expect your data this week? After all, a real cowboy
delivers his information on time."
Red shrugged. "I'll get it in. I wanna get paid, don't
I?"
"Another point. In the meantime, I will have Mr. Gideon
stall for us. It seems that there has been a call for a replay of
an earlier report, the serial from Chicago."
"NAMSR."
"Correct. The accidential AI seems to have found an
audience." He took a sip of the draft beer in front of him, making
a face. "Warm."
"Should've drank it faster."
Now the face was for her. "A person in your position
should learn how to keep her mouth shut. If it wasn't for the
recent interest in AIs, you wouldn't have this slack time."
She spread her hands carefully, indicating retreat. "I'll
make sure to thank Dex next time I'm in his sector."
"Do that. Because it will take more than a monkeytrick to
get you off next time. We are a patient people, but even our
patience has its limits." Slav gutturals gave the threat a new
level of intimidation. "In the meantime, we will redistribute your
NAMSR report. Unfortunately, we cannot send it through the usual
channels--a rights matter."
She nodded thoughtfully. Even on the shadow edge of
society, there were rules to be followed, claims to be honored.
Surjancev/GmbH had obtained "Deus Ex" through another company, the
original thief, and had to play by their rules.
"But we will get it out. Of course, the cost of individual
transmission will come out of your retainer."
Red winced. She was counting on that credit to get her out
of her latest hole. "Yeah, right," she said, trying for a measure
of cool. "That's biz."
From: kmrc@ellis.uchicago.edu (Melanie A. Miller)
Subject: STORY> Hoosier Red, Part Five
Date: 29 Jun 92 21:50:24 GMT
Hoosier Red: Life and Times of a Questionable Property
by Melanie Miller
PART FIVE: The Mid-Axe and Dr. What
Red stared out of the jet window, gazing blankly at the
cloudscape flowing beneath the plane. Labyrinth's last words kept
going through her mind, like some goddamned GOTO loop--_I need you
alive and well, Red. I knew you would come eventually. You see,
Johnson wants you to erase me._
The fucker was expecting me, she thought. I don't like
that--I don't like that at all.
The jet lurched slightly, reminding her that she wasn't on
a carnival ride. She didn't like traveling, and thought one of the
beauties of cyberspace was that travel usually wasn't necessary--in
the matrix, a Low Earth Orbit spa were just as accessible as the
market around the corner. But every so often a nervous customer
would demand to see their hired cowboy in the flesh. At those
times, Red would hop a ramjet and spend the flight in a VR practice
routine, coming out of it just in time to see the wheels hit the
tarmac.
_But not this time, baby._ This time, Bozo wanted
company--conscious company, he said, not some simstim bimbo with a
talk show. _Dumb yahoo,_ she thought sullenly. Without looking,
she grabbed her drink and took another swallow, making a face.
"Ecch. It's all melted."
"Well, if you'd drink the damned thing instead of making
faces at the atmosphere, it wouldn't melt on you," Madrid said
reasonably. For the flight, he was wearing his "conservative
look"--pastel makeup and button-down silks. "I'll get you another
one."
"Never mind." The last image of her flatline came to
mind--the Mid-Axis Tower, the cold polluted blue beyond plate
glass. Why did she have the feeling that it was important? "The
booze isn't helping."
Madrid glanced out at the salmon-colored clouds, resting
his chin on her shoulder as he did so. "I know something that'll
help," he said, delicately licking her ear.
The licking felt good. Red turned her head a notch, giving
him a long, steady look. "Where?"
"The classic location."
She arched an eyebrow. "I've never done it in a ramjet
john before."
"Life's full of new experiences, doll."
"So you've said. Let's go."
Located on the western edge of the Sprawl, Chicago was a
series of Fuller domes on the curve of Lake Michigan, stopping
short of knife-edged highstacks that marked the perimeter of the
Old Loop. Instinctively, Red glanced up from her seat in the
southbound LSD mono, trying to pick out the Mid-Axis Building.
Remembered riding up to the observation deck when it had still been
the Sears Tower, and the sudden, violent nosebleed her little
brother had gotten from the pressure drop. She smiled.
"You scare me when you smile like that," Madrid commented
laconically, using a peculiar patois of ASL and jive to supplement
his words.
Red shrugged, keeping the smile. "I scare everybody."
"Especially when you're not wearing makeup."
She let it pass--he'd get his later on. "I was just
thinking about the Mid-Axe. When I was out." She didn't like to
say flatlined. "I mean, L had me cold--it could've just kept me in
the matrix and talked to me there. Why would it bother to conjure
up a simstim of the Mid-Axe's observation deck?"
Madrid squinted at the building, crinkling the whiteface
between his eyes. "It's an AI, Red, " he said patiently. "Nobody
understands AI motivation, not even the hotshots who build them.
We're talking true alien intelligence here--humans can outguess an
AI sometimes, but they can't actually predict what it's gonna do."
He honked his nose thoughtfully, considering the black monolith
ahead of them. "Maybe it likes the building. Hell, half of the
fucker is Sense/Net databank--"
He blinked, glancing at her suddenly blank face. "Ah,
shit, you don't think--"
He cut off, switching over to full signing. After a
moment, she nodded. "L can't be in the LMU tanks--they're dead,"
she signed back. "It's gotta be somewhere. And that kind of a
core would be like a fucking mansion for an AI, as long as it
wasn't too fussy about its neighbors."
"And Sense/Net wants it out." Madrid tensed, sudden anger
making the clown makeup gleam in the overheads as another piece
slid home. "Fucking hell," he grunted aloud. "Yamujitsu."
"Yeah. Makes you wonder who the parent company is," Red
signed dryly. "Fairly intelligent for those schmoes--set up a
dummy front, invite us to go in and investigate their pet
annoyance, and they can catch the two proverbial birds with one
stone."
Madrid followed the slight movements of her fingers,
frowning. "Invite us to enter and dig deep a tame Quayle, so they
can catch two wisdom pigeons with one hunk of rock?" he repeated,
confused.
"Never mind."
He shrugged. "It's your fingers. What do you want to do?"
"I want to find out why Sense/Net's so hot to get rid of
Labyrinth," Red said, gazing at the slightly sticky wall of the
monorail car. Lurid advertisements for Richie D's Pizza Parlor and
City Hall screamed at her tired nerves. "For that, we're gonna
need a local setup and some juice."
Grinning crookedly, Madrid fingered the squirt carnation in
his lapel. "And I bet I know where we're gonna find that, right?"
Red rolled her eyes, frowning. "I don't like it any more
than you do," she muttered.
"Hey, I never said I didn't like the Doctor," Madrid
claimed. He paused. "Come to think of it, I've never met the
Doctor. All you've told me about him is that he's got one of the
biggest black tech setups this side of the Yak--oh, and that and he
blots out the sun."
Red shrugged. "He does."
Idly, Madrid pumped a test squirt onto the seat in front of
them. "The bigger they are, the less effort I have to use," he
murmured, watching as the sulfuric acid ate a small hole in the
seat's pseudoplastic. "They usually trip over themselves first."
"Boze--behave, please? This isn't gonna be easy."
They disembarked at the 106th Street stop. Behind them was
the southern shore of Lake Michigan, partially hidden by the
bombed-out shell of a Falstaff brewery and the I-90 Skyway. Red
sniffed the air experimentally, enjoying the tang of monocarbons.
"Smells like home."
"Or industrial solvent," Madrid replied, pulling his
trenchcoat around him. "This place is filthy."
"Leftovers from the steel mills," she explained, kicking at
the platform. A fine dust rose into the air, showing black against
the slate gray platform walls. "Wisconsin, U.S. Steel, LTV--they
all closed down in the mid 1980's, but enough shit got pumped into
the surrounding land and air to dye this place a permanent brown.
You can imagine what the locals' lungs must look like."
Madrid shook his head, fidding out a pair of Snoopy
sunglasses from a jacket pocket. "Why didn't they just get it
enclosed with a dome?"
"You'd have to understand the neighborhood," Red said,
heading for the stairs. Madrid fell in step, and they picked their
way down the crumbling concrete staircase. "The people around here
are really insular, okay? I'm talking xenophobic--had a high
school teacher who said this was the only neighborhood in the city
that handed out visas. And enforced them." She shrugged, glancing
around at the industrial sites to the north. "Originally, the city
offered them a dome, but they said no because that would've taken
them out of isolation."
"And after the domes became mandatory?"
"Construction sites were blown up, material shipments were
delayed, a few aldermen got assassinated." Red shrugged. "The HLA
was pretty strong back then."
"HLA?"
"Hegewisch Liberation Army." And she sighed wistfully.
"Ah, those were the days."
They flagged a hovercab at the station's ticketbooth. The
cabbie, a small black man with two copper rings set in his nose,
glanced at the address Red handed him and frowned. "You sure you
wanna go here, lady? That's some badass territory I gotta drive
through."
"I got an appointment." She tossed a medium-thick roll of
New Yen through the safety slot. "Here's a map."
The cash disappeared as if it wasn't there at all. "It's
your ass, lady."
"You bet, baby. Now drive."
The cab kicked ito second and churned down 106th Street.
"Just out of curiosity, where exactly are we going?" Madrid asked,
gazing at the dilapidated two-story houses and false-front shops
rolling by his window. "This looks residential. In a burned-out,
'only if I was desperate and couldn't afford a nice cardboard box'
way, of course."
"It looks residential because it is residential. Doc
bought our old house when they slated the block for demolition,"
Red said. "Bought the whole block, too--turned it all into his
place. It's pretty cool." The cab made a pavement-distorted left
onto a new street, chugging to a halt in the middle of the block.
"I'll believe it when I. . ." Madrid's jaw dropped,
prosthetic fangs snapping into place in reflex. "Holy shit."
"Yeah, I know." Red looked over Madrid's shoulder at the
structure. Three stories tall at its highest point, the hulking
building had orginally been a block-long series of two-story
houses. At some point, someone had gone around and covered every
open space on the perimeter with sheet metal, amor plating,
construction blocks, even the occasional dome segment. If it was
big, relatively flat, and mobile, Red mused, it could be found on
the outside of the building, welded into place and painted dead
black. The result resembled an Escher painting brought to
screaming, three-d life. "Doc's people went through and gutted all
the houses, so that they're all connected to this humongous tunnel.
It kinda looks like a batcave from hell."
Madid raised both eyebrows, suddenly glad that he had
packed a few extra surprises in his silks. "I can imagine."
The cab door opened with a hiss, depositing them on the
rotting sidewalk. As soon as they were clear, the door slammed
shut and the hovercab huffed into high gear, heading down the
block. As soon as the roar of the hover disappeared, Madrid
realized that he heard almost nothing else. None of the normal
street sounds, not even an occasional burst of horns from the
Skyway. It was like they had walked into some kind of aural
vacuum. "Is it always this dead around here?" he muttered.
Red listened for a minute. "Nope. Means they're watching
us. Probably had us scoped out three blocks back." She stepped
over a large chunk of dusty concrete and made her way up to one of
the housefronts. "He usually likes to freak out people with the
silent treatment."
"It's working."
Red flashed him a quick grin before turning to the door, a
massive old piece of oak sawn down to fit inside the doorframe.
Hinged to the door was a knocker shaped like a cast iron hand with
an old Mac mouse in its palm. Red grabbed the knocker and banged
it in a syncopated rhythm.
BUM bum ba DUM dum.
She waited. Finally, the answering code came back.
BUM BUMP!
The door was opened by a wizened old man wearing a filthy
t-shirt that appeared to have been white a few millenia ago.
Written across the front in lab alphanumerics was the slogan, "I
WAS THE PRODUCT OF BIOGENETIC FIELD TESTING." "Ahhh. ..what do you
want," he overenunciated.
"You got that right," Red replied.
The man blinked. "What?"
"Exactly. And tell him to get his ass out here before Red
comes in there and kicks it for him."
A few brain cells must have fired in the right sequence,
because he ducked back into the building with a speed that
surprised Madrid. "Um, hon," he said diffidently, "far be it from
me to question your actions, but are you sure you know what you're
doing?"
"I grew up around here, Boze. Violence is the only kind of
language the Doctor understands." She paused. "That, and AD&D."
Another minute passed before one of the largest humans
Madrid had ever seen emerged from the doorway. "Jesus, he does
blot out the sun," he said reverently.
"Told ya." Red walked up to the behemoth, thumbs hooked in
her belt loops. "Hi, Doc."
"Red." It wasn't a word, she thought--it was the sound of
concrete on steel. "Long time no see, girl."
"Yeah, sorry about that--my Supersaver fares never included
Chicago." She cleared her throat, turning back to the clown.
"Doc, I'd like to introduce you to my hardware artist, Bozo Madrid,
Esquire. Boze, this is Dr. What. Slamman, part-time fence, master
of black law. Also my brother."
"Nice to meet you." Madrid extended a hand, saw it
engulfed in the Doctor's massive paw. "Boy, you're big."
"Yeah, I know." The Doctor looked bored, like he'd heard
it a million times before. Which, Madrid mused, he probably had.
"Thought you'd cleared out for good, Red."
"Yeah, I thought so, too," she said tiredly.
"Unfortunately, something made me come back."
The Doctor grunted, sucking his teeth. "You in trouble?"
"Not yet. Something grabbed me when I was on a run,
something in this area. I want to check it out up close and
personal."
He grunted again. "And you probably want to use my setup
while you're here," he added sarcastically.
Red gave him a bright smile. "That's what family's for,
hon."
Copyright 1992 by Melanie Miller. All rights reserved.
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