From: illmade@jhunix4.hcf.jhu.edu (Tracey M Burroughs)
Subject: Upload part one
Date: 11 Feb 93 19:28:25 GMT


 Chan pulls his goggles off and looks around, making a half-assed
attempt to reintegrate.  Indica looks at him, shakes her head and begins
packing another bong hit.

"Welcome back, glad to see ya.  Should've used the goddamn ionizer-I assume
you want one?"  She asks through an exhalation of sweet-smelling smoke.

"Stupid question.  Where are we headed?"  Chan asks; he's just now into the
fact that he's in a jeep, and cruising through some pretty funky territory-
looks like southeast did before Chaos Day-pipeheads on every corner,
not a cop in sight, and millions of children, swarming through the streets
like locusts, snatching hood ornaments off moving cars and dropping fire-
crackers into open windows.  He tries to be nonchalant about the fact that
his is the only white face in sight, shrugs and takes a long slow pull from
Indica's antique graphics.

"Winston's, he's got some killer derm for me.  I been smoking shit and
dropping way too many hits for weeks, and he finally fucking beeps me.  I'm
trying to drive and talk to the fucker at the same time-got one eye out here
and one in some fucked-up sim that he's got running.  Say's he borrowed a
coupla gigs from DIA."

     Not the Smothest Fucking Move, considering the fact that Defense Intel,
(rogue non-sequiter in action) really seemed to enjoy fucking with those who
fucked with them.  They'd been known to let people who hacked them for space
hang out for quite awhile, wait for 'em to get good and comfortable in their
construct, and then flash-write the memory block (and wilson's brain at the
same time) with ancient experimental AI routines-a process that flatlined the
lucky;the unlucky were left with the cumulative brainpower of a stoned kitten.

"Sweet, now drive through one of those McFood things so I can suck down
something besides smoke."

        ----------------------------------------------------------

     Metro sprawl, 2013.  Not much had changed in the last twenty years or
so.  People still rot within themselves, afraid to explore anything any
futher away than their crotch.  The Green trend had made life easy for every-
one.  That is, everyone who either knew the tech or who was already on the
gravy train.  As usual, a lot of poor fuckers had been left out in the cold.


"...and like the man says..."

"Fuck 'the man',he's not paying for this headache, you are."

"And like I'm saying,  when you want to get something done, you have to go to
the best, it's too many fuckers tryin' slide by,perpin' like they know the
tech-I know for a fact that you got it going on when you pop some suicide
candidate's shit open to install one of those neuro-whatchemmacallits.  I was
just tellin' my man Charlie..."

"You were tellin him what?"  Sidney, a self-styled neural artist and tech
finally looks up from the bloody mess that he's picking through for long
enough to make eye contact with the piece of shit standing in front of him.

"...that I don't know jack about no neuroshit, and if I needed some shit done
I'd know that it was time to change my line of work.  A man should keep his
brain like it is-it ain't natural for a man to put things in his head; I put
some headphones on, some goggles, I'm there-I don't need no..."

     And here we go.  Another fool explaining exactly why they don't need
implants.  Evidently, some people can't appreciate technological advances,
even those advances made by small groups of rogue technicians, the kind of
guys who'd pick through the remnants of somebody's head to tell you what the
last thing that person looked at was.  Sid doesn't even bother trying to
school this dude, just adds another charge to this dude's cost list in his
head-the charge:too much chatter +1000 creds.

        ----------------------------------------------------------------

"These guys are the shit!  They'll blow your fucking mind in, man!"

"Yeah."  Another night, another show.  Another fuck hanging out at noon,
trying to skip the door charge, hoping to meet the band, maybe get in on some
decadence, at best, he'd look like the man-talking to the band before and the
set, walking around like he was carrying the codes for life, grabbing beers
from the backstage icecan and all the other assorted bullshit that somebody's
number one fan was liable to do.

"I mean, you want industrial right?  These guys are it.  They made the shit
up!"

"Yeah."  Why this early?  The band was nowhere in sight, the road crew
wouldn't even be around for at least another hour.  This kid was just a bit
early.

"I mean, they've been around longer than anyone else.  They been putting shit
out for years."

"Look, you got any buds?"

"Uh..."  Flatscan, no expression whatsover...Definitely  holding.  "...are
you a cybercop in boxer shorts?"

"Look kid, my name's Adam, go roll me a fat joint and leave it in my office,
top of the stairs.  Run out to one of those McFood things and get me a coupla
cokes and two of their meal-deal deals.  When you get back, go out that back
door and wait for a big truck.  Those guys'll be tired and pissed off.  Help
'em unload their shit.  You'll get to meet the dudes, and I'll tell the
bouncers that you've got full access, but in the meantime, I don't want to
you telling me that some band that need 40 direct boxes is going to blow my
mind.  They're more likely to blow my PA than anything else."

        ----------------------------------------------------------------

     Another bong hit.  "So where were you at?"

     Chan swallows, sucks down the last of his coke and laughs.   You'd have
loved it-they got this bike trail sim for joe athelete and his workout
buddies at home.  I hacked in and drop a porno lood into it, I think all the
dudes stopped to watch, but the chicks all just peddled right through."

"Give 'em some credit, they probably get charged mega for the shit-Joe
asshole is willing to pay to see simtwat."

     The day passes, as Chan goggles back in and Indica continues the drive
through Metro sprawl, roughly the strip between what used to be called
Baltimore, MD and Fairfax, VA.  Over the past twenty years the city of DC had
kept expanding, eating land like a hungry beast, shopping malls becoming stops
on the rail service, and slums springing up where deer had run in days past.
Navigating the sprawl in any sort of four-wheeled vehicle was like swimming
in glue, slow traffic caused by an abundance of cars and people who would have
been pedestrians on any sane world.

     More turns, as the last of the sun drips into the night.  Street lit by
the rhythmic flashing of streetlights in varied state of disrepair, flickering
on and off; blue, then orange, keeping time with jumping sparks and the steady
whine of bad power lines.  Chan pulls his goggles of for the second time in
ten hours (a rare occasion) and shows some interest in something other than
Indica's graphics.

"Hey, how soon will we be there?  This is pretty sketcky."  Chan sees the
flip-a-cred hookers walk past, wondering who'd be suicidal enough to try and
get hot with any of them.

"Awww, poor Chan-can't tell if it's dick or pussy walkin' past, doesn't know
whether to be hard or not."  Indica says disdainfully, painfully bored with
the startstop traffic of the sprawl.

     Before Chan could come up with a half-decent comeback, the jeeps spinning
out and sliding into an open door that he hadn't seen coming.  The interior
was dark, and smelled of reeking metal-like fried circuit boards and flaming
gasohol.  He thought he saw the vague outline of a hand coming at him, and
then he began to fade into blankness, kinda the same feeling as when you
jacked into an unpowered deck.  This was the way shit always seem to get
started-he'd tune out, and when he pulled his goggles off
when he pulled his goggles off, some tripped-out shit was going on.  Why
couldn't people just do more bong hits?

        -----------------------------------------------------------

     The smoke cleared at about a quarter of midnight, and the laser setup
cleared it's throat about ten minutes later.  The band, three burt-looking
techs with grimy keyboards and grimier hands began to lay it all down.  The
noise let the kid right in on the part of the trip that you weren't supposed
to know about.  That bit you'd claim to have been down with in front of any-
body but an eraseable AI.  The place was packed, faint reek of marijuana
gently tugging at the edge of perception, voodoo lighting effects coalesced
with the trails created by the mixture of fatigue and halucinogens that he'd
plastered himself with before the show.


        Alright, that's it for now.  E-mail a plot or at least some crits,
        and I'll post chapter two in a coupla days.