From: Cory.Rockliff@f631.n2605.z1.fidonet.org (Cory Rockliff)
Date: 15 Dec 94 03:37:17 -0500
Subject: NEW STORY: We See You

Hey all, this is my first attempt at cyberpunk fiction.

This story has met marginal success, but be warned that it was written by me,
and though I am reasonably well read in cp, was written with the mainstream
in mind, most notably a HS english teacher. =)

Enjoy.

You attach the 'trodes to your forehead, sweating in anticipation. A friend
sits with you, setting up his own deck. Your friend suddenly vanishes as the
neuralink initiates, and your friend is two-to-the-n light years away,  sitting
next to you in an uncomfortably ergonomic work chair, and you jack.

A web-like grid, suddenly coming into existance around you, maps out the
terrain to be surfed, neat oversimplification of intricate reality(?). You
glide with practiced ease  through the gate of your feed, past others, and you
are swept by the current with alarming velocity, through data infinitum,
manifold images, sounds, traces of phrases, gestures, words unknown, unspoken,
unheard. You veer off the stream, a sublet's open maw closes around you, you,
pitched through a tunnel of none and all dimensions, and you've made it.

You're in.

You sit now with your friend, in the same chairs, looking out through the
undetectably one-way window, at the factories surrounding your loft. Abandoned,
some of them, they sing a tune of the time when men worked in factories, and
strong-arm work was thought fit to be done by human hands; and yes, the steel
tubing and smokestacks still rise above the roofs of the old industrials,
though smoke no longer from them escapes. The sky is overcast today, and the
sunlight does not distinguish between the buildings, the old industrials
becoming one industrial, one large factory, product unknown and unneeded.

You take another sip of the coffee you have made, poured black for you, an
intermediate shade of beige for your friend, and talk.

"Look, we're on the edge of an incredible revolution! Life and interaction
draws away from the meat, minds connect over the matrix, ignoring time and
space, to create entire sciences, cultures, and subcultures, and it's all
happening at an incredible rate. Real-time is obsolete, you grok?

"And privacy?"

"Privacy is obsolete, too, irrelevant, we're all beginning to form this global
consciousness-"

"What about those of us who want no part of this 'global consciousness' of
yours?"

"They miss the revolution."

Your friend scoffs, walking across the livingroom to refill his mug with the
same coffee-milk ratio, and returns, sitting down once again.

"Now here comes FDC, the 'Federal Data Control'," you sneer. "not even good
enough to do the work by themselves, having to hire freelancers to surf for
them-"

Your friend blanches slightly, spilling hot coffee on his hand, curses loudly,
and goes off in pursuit of a paper towel.

"They've got their claws in every data net in existance, monitoring us,
WATCHING us. They logon to our boards, play good user for a while, then all of
a sudden they pull back, their accounts vanish, and a week later the board goes
down. Data trashed, and what can we do, turn them in?"

"Look, man," says your friend, glancing at his watch. "I've got to go."

"Yeah, sure, see you, make sure you lock the door on your way out."

1, 2, 3, and you're back in the matrix, endless plain of reality extending in
all directions. "Login," you think. "Login, d/l, and jack the hell out of there
before you get traced."

"+++01n LOGIN:," came the prompt.

"UNCLE_FRED", you instuct the comm prog to send.

"PASSWORD:"

"HACKERSDIE", and you've got access, options suspended in a prismatic cube
before you. Your time-online reads 00:12 as you surf past something that
catches your virtual eye, a message, a message to your unknowing host
UNCLE_FRED, a message that astonishes even you, you who have hacked the fed
databanks numerous times, and as you scroll past the text, capturing it on your
comlink's auto-record...

SYSADMIN ONLINE, announces your comlink. Your blood freezes in its cycle. You
try to pull back...

TRACER INIT, reads the status line, and you, fly in the web of the FDC, spew
out curses. TRACE SUCCESSFUL, and you desperately attempt to jack out.

SYSADMIN EMERGENCY BREAK IN:

You rip the 'trodes from your forehead, wincing at the pain, trembling as the
cold sweat trickles down, his words a silent echo in your semi jacked-out mind:

WE SEE YOU.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, it's me," you send, "Damn, look, I got into FDC WHQ-"

"Are you fucking crazy?"

"No, no, look, I think I'm in trouble, man."

"Damn right you're in trouble! You don't mess with the FDC!"

"No, look, they traced me!"

"I tried to warn you! It's too late now. I gotta go."

"Damn, no!"

"CU," and the carrier drops.

Plus 23 hours realtime, and you're cursing again. You recently jacked in, and
not twenty minutes into your time, you are violently jerked back to reality,
bright green glaring into your eyes until you remove the trodes. This, though,
this was no routine hardware failure or server crash, line noise, or fatal
error. This, you think to yourself, is the work of the FDC. They're after you.
They've come to collect.

A sleepless night, due to more than the excess coffee. You still can't jack in,
and your nerves are running short with withdrawal. You tried a franchise
DataNet com service, crashing two of their decks trying to jack on your account
before you were ejected from the store.

Another week passes before the brick comes through your window, landing on your
worktable in the early morning. It looks to you so strangely at ease, reddish
brick floating in a sea of printouts, hardware, yellow post-it notes that never
remind you of things you truly must not forget. Instead of panic, suprisingly,
a dead calm settles over you at this odd sight.

You must, of course, escape.

Envision a very large, very dark, room. Elaborate, creating even darker
corners, pockets of pitch black. Imagine the steady dripping of rainwater from
the ceiling, becoming a puddle on the old concrete of the floor. Think now, of
things mechanical. Fill the room with cars, new and old, and a rack where
Japanese motorcycles are stacked. Create an elevator in the northwest corner,
emitting a soft feep as the doors open, letting you out into this room.

Your shoes tap on the floor, the sound echoing across the room, merging with
the sound of water dripping. You glance at the ceiling, then begin walking: You
have decided to stay in an hotel this night. A tap of shoes behind you, softer
than your own, now closer, now farther behind. Staring into the unlit
passageway behind you, however, nothing can be seen.

You are being followed.

That is certain. You feel once again that dead calm, this time reinforced by
the feel of hard steel in the waistband of your pants. You keep on walking, the
footsteps behind you following, and you snap. Rage overtakes you, washing over
you in a wave of raging hatred, hatred of those who monitor you, watch you,
study you...

"Damn you!" You turn, firing once, twice, three times at your stalker, feeling
the bullets connect as though they were an extension of your own arm. The man's
blood stains the old concrete red.

You are sitting in a large easy chair in your hotel room, the flicker of the
screen playing off your face, illuminating it in its sharp contrast to the
otherwise dark room. The blinds are drawn shut, and you learn that they have
found fingerprints on the gun that you dropped at the scene of the murder. The
phone rings, and you let it, answering on the fourth or fifth ring.

"Hello?"

"We see you," says a raspy voice, and there is a knock on the door. Drenched
with sweat, tears streaming down your cheeks, you let the phone drop to the
floor, and peer through  the small viewhole in the door, seeing three men in
suits, one with a palmtop- your friend. You read the letters engraved in the
back of the machine- FDC.

You scream, running down the hallway, and you leap for the window, feeling the
sting of glass, and you fall, free, followed no longer.


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That's it! Don't worry, you'll be hearing more of me, and I -will- improve :)

Comments to:

i-net> CORY.ROCKLIFF@CFONJ.COM, also ROCKLIFF@PIPELINE.COM

fido netmail> 1:2605/631, as Cory Rockliff.

bcnu