>From: jerryn@glnserv.UUCP (Jerry Norris)
Subject: The continuing adventures of Slag Deckjockey
Date: 26 Sep 91 23:25:54 GMT

The Party

    Early afternoon.  I was sitting at the console, plugged into some cool ice
with a new syntho unit humming besides me, the cryo-storage up to thirty
percent and juicing, when I saw this dataflash down near the basenet.  I
smoothed down the pikes, working the matrix layers in a fastflash swing,
threading down to the lower lines and beyond them to the base, where all the
data comes into the matrix.  I was looking for the flash.
    It's not easy to work the base, that's why most of the cowboys stay up in
the higher levels of the matrix, working the data after it's had time to cool.
I've seen results of others who have stayed too long in the basenet, jerky
movements and wet dreams at all times of the day.  But I'd been there before.
I knew the moves.
    So I'm searchin' the flash.  You've gotta be basequick to find a
dataflash; the multitude of I/O can void you in a pico.  There it was,
two sectors over, next to some heavy stream that was coming from iuvax.  But
what was it doing following Oracle stuff?  I jerked over there, mindless of
the parity errors I caused.
    It didn't take long to figure out that the dataflash had hooked onto the
iuvax stream for the ride up into the matrix.  If I waited, I could be with
the rest of the joy-boys and search through it at leisure.  But I like a
challenge.  I caught up with the dataflash in quicktime, avoiding a small
messy tangle of data from alt.sex.pictures coming from MITnet.  I decided to
run straight through the flash and stack it in storage for later perusal,
basenet becoming more lively as the multi-corps drew on the cheaper transmit
rates.  I read the flash while stacking, and I had to laugh when I saw the
hookmode, a little terrier with it's teeth in the ass-end of the iuvax stream,
with a little girl in a blue and white dress holding the dog.
    I flashed back up into the matrix, worked the lines a while longer, then
jacked out.  I decided to study the flash, something about an invitation.  I
knew the trademark of the I/O hook, a matrix cowboy who called himself Dotty.
He was definitely matrix material, in fact there were a few who thought he'd
worked basenet too long.  I knew that he just had a different think-kink, so I
read the invite.
    The party was for the night, hot tubs, coke, junk food.  Hard to resist,
so I didn't.  It was in the north sector of the city, a low-level maintenance
area; lots of trees, malls, healthy shit like that.  I opened the comm to my
razorgirl wife, "Kati, we're invited to a goto up north.  Think we can make
it?"
    The face flashed up on the left corner of the screen, "Sure, Slag.  We'll
leave the kids with the sitter and flash on over."
    I agreed, so I wrote up the sitter mod, placed the equipment on auto
(didn't want things to get too messy and the kids usually only need a bruise
or too to figure out the no-nos) and we started to flash.  We were three
blocks from the main tube when a small motorpack surrounded us.  I applied a
short burst of front and rear tracers to let them know that I wasn't in the
mood.  Normally the whiteline glow of the phosphor bullets will impress a
motorpack after dark, especially near a flash system.  But the girl on my left
opened up with her uzi, spraying back to rear, trying to get the tires.  To my
rear the joeboy whipped out a shotgun and tried to shoot out the rear sensor
package.  Damn!  Why did I have to run up against a coked-up motorpack when I
want to go and have some fun?
    I went to attack mode, I could hear the electric motors humming from the
rear gunrack port while the car went to skirts, tires being too unreliable in
a duel.  Kati took the sighting helmet, leaving me more freedom to drive
without having to worry with the sensory equipment built into the helmet.  She
wasn't in a mood today, sorry for the motorpack.  She hit the side flamers
with a vengeance, the two goons on either side of us dowsed in a shower of
flaming napalm.  The girl and her uzi were hit by a couple of fleshette
rounds, which wouldn't have been too much trouble, since she was cranking on
the coke, but my beautiful razorgirl had added a couple of magneto mines,
which struck the front tire of the bike and exploded.  So much for Miss Uzi.
    The packer in front turned around, saw what was happening to his gang, and
zoomed.  The two in the rear tried to do the same but Kati caught them in a
side to side spray from the rearmount .45s.  I watched through the rear
camera as they went down, which is why we drove over the frag mine that the
zoomer had laid down before he left.
    Normally, frags don't worry skirt vehicles too much, but this one hit one
of the control blades and I was starting to lose horizontal control.  So I
threw the switch back to tires.  That's when I found out that the frag had
penetrated the well covers and punctured the tires.  Damn!  We rolled on the
rims, sparks flying like rocket thrusts while I started trying to brake.  The
entry ramp to the flashway was coming up, but I wasn't going to make it.  I
sidled over to the walkway next to the ramp, firing up the emergencys and
hitting the siren button.  The few walkers cleared out fast.  Good.  My
insurance was good but I don't like to test them.
    We slammed into the throw-away barrier, then plowed into the grass, the
titanium rims dug furrows that deepened, then the frame was flatlined as we
jerked to a halt.  Through the smoke I could see orange licks of flame and I
started to worry, but the autos kicked in and the powerplant and drivetrain
were flooded with halon.  I looked at Kati, "Let's rent a movie." She nodded.


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