Cyberpunk.

A novel.

by Bruce Bethke.

0/ 0/ : Warmstart

Okay, so it's morning. Sparrows are arguing in the dwarf maples outside my bedroom window. Metallic coughs and sputters echo down the street; old man Xiang must have scored some pirate gasoline and tried to start his Mercedes again. Skateboard wheels grind and clatter on cracked pavement. Boombox music Doppler-shifts as a squad of middle school AnnoyBoys roll past.

Ah, the sounds of Spring.

Closer by, I flag soft noises filtering up from the kitchen: Mr.

HotBrew wheezing through another load of caffix. The pop and crinkle of yummy shrinkwrap being split and peeled. Solid thunk of the microwave oven door slamming closed, chaining into the bleats, chimes and choppy vosynthed th-an-k-yo-us of someone doing the program job on breakfast.

Someone? Mom, for sure. Like, nuking embalmed meadow m.u.f.fins is her domestic duty. Dad only cooks raw things that can be immolated on the hibachi. I listen closer, hear her cheerful mindless morning babble and him making with the occasional simian grunt in acknol, or maybe they aren't even talking to each other. Once Mom gives the appliances a start they can do a pretty fair sim of a no-brain conversation all by themselves.

I roll over. Brush the long black hair back from my face. Get my left eye open and find the bedside clock.

6:53.

Okay, so it's not morning. Not official, not yet. School day rules: true morning doesn't start until0/ 7:0/0/ :0/0/ , exact. I scrunch the covers up around my cheeks, snuggle a little deeper in the comfty warm, work at getting both eyes open.

Jerky little holo of a s.p.a.ce shuttle comes out from behind the left2 edge of the clock. Chick. Chick. Chick. Stubby white wings flash as the ugly blunt thing banks to pa.s.s in front. Chick. Chick. Numbers change.

6:54.

I hate that clock.

I mean, when I was a twelve, I thought that clock was total derzky.

Cooler than utter cool. The penultimax: A foot-high lump of jagged blue-filled Lucite, numbers gleaming like molten silver poured on a glacier, orbited forever by a Cla.s.sic Shuttle. Every five minutes the cargo doors open and a satellite does the deploy. Every hour on the hour the 'nauts come out for a little s.p.a.ce spindance.

Shuttle swings around the right side of the clock. Chick. Chick.

Stupid thing. Not even a decent interfill routine, just a little white brick moving in one-second jerks. A couple months back me and Georgie tried to hack the video PROMs, reprogram it to do the Challenger every hour on the hour. Turned out the imager wasn't a holosynth at all, just a glob of brainless plastic and a couple hundred laser diodes squirting canned stillframes.

Chick. The shuttle vanishes behind the right edge of the clock. Gone for thirty seconds.

I lie there, looking at the clock, and mindlock once more on just how Dad the thing truly is. I mean, I can almost see the motivationals hanging off it like slimey, sticky strings: "Is good for you, Mikey. Think s.p.a.ce, Mikey. Science is future, honorable son. Being gifted is not enough; you must study 'til eyes bleed, claw way through Examination h.e.l.l, and perhaps one day if you are extra special good just maybe you get to go Up!"

Yeah, up. To the High Pacific. Get a Brown Nose in nemawashi- the Nipponese art of kissing b.u.t.t-and become a deck wiper on the Nakamura industrial platform. Or maybe the PanEuros will decide they need some good public relations, let us and the Soviets kill a few more people trying to get to Mars again. Boy oh boy.

When you're 13.75 years old and almost a soph.o.m.ore in high school, you start to think about these things.3 Outside my window, old man Xiang's car door creaks open with a rusty squeal, slams shut with a sharp krummp. The sparrows explode in a flutter of stubby wings and terrified cheeping, fly off chased by a boiling stream of Chinese obscenities. I hear a deep grunt and the sc.r.a.pe of shoes on pavement as he gets behind the car, starts pushing.

Shuttle comes back out from behind the clock. Chick. Chick. Cargo doors pop open, in prep for the 6:55 satellite deploy. I roll over, pull a pillow onto my head, try to find another minute or two of sleep.

No good. There's light seeping in; not much, but enough to show that I'm lying between Voyager sheets and pillowcases. Wearing dorky NASA Commander AmericaTM cosmo-jammies (only 'cause all my other nightclothes are in the wash, honest). Close my eyes, and I can still see Mom and Dad smiling stupid at me as I tear open the Christmas wrap, recognize the dumb fake roboto and cyberlightpipe pattern and start to gag, then scratch my true response and give them what they want to hear: "Geez, Mom, these are real neat!" Almost said far out and groovy, but figured that'd tip them off.

Rayno explained it to me real good once, how Olders brains are stuck in a kind of wishful self-sim'd past. Like, his bio-dad used to build model privatecars. Whenever his mom kicked him out for the weekend he'd go over to his bio-dad's, get bored to death and halfway back again hearing about Chryslers, Lincolns. Wasn't 'til he was fifteen years old that he finally met his bio-grandfather, learned that the family's true last privatecar was a brainless little 3-cylinder Latka.

Chime. Downstairs, the microwave announces that breakfast is ready. The oven door opens with a sproing. Mom says something cheerful as she slaps the foodpods on the table; Dad rustles his faxsheets and grumbles something low in reply. I make a tunnel out of my pillow, peek at the clock. 6:57.

Nope. Still isn't morning.

Anyway, that's where Rayno's bio-dad's brain got stuck. Georgie's old man scrounges parts, rebuilds obsolete American computers, never stops ranting about how great they really were and it's all Management4 and Wall Street's fault that the domestic industry is dead. My Dad's too busy to build/rebuild anything, what with his job and his first wife's grownup kids, so he buys me s.p.a.ce shuttle clocks. Flying model Saturn- Five's. Apollo Hi-Lites video singles. A full-bandwidth membership in AstraNet and a Nitachi telescope.

A telescope? Hey, this is Dad we're talking about! No mere hunk of gla.s.s could be half expensive enough for the trophy son of David Richard Harris, Fuji-DynaRand's f.u.ku Shacho of Marketing (American). He bought me a zillion-power CCD-retinated fused-silicate photon amplification device with all the optional everythings. Set it on this monster tripod out on the deck-looks like Mung the Magnificent's fritzin' Interplanetary Death Cannon-and every night when he's in town and not working late we have to go out there, burn our ten minutes of Quality Time shivering in the cold and damp and trying to spot something educational.

Of course, being Dad, he's also got to shut off the programmables and insist on using the dumb manual controls. Meaning most nights we wind up looking at cloud projos, comm satellites, wreckage from the Freedom, and other stuff that might be stars or planets but he's never real sure which. Then he swings the 'scope around to point at the Fuji- DynaRand platform, hanging there fat and low in geosync like a big green 'n' gold corporate logo-which, thanks to a gigundo holo laser on the platform, is just exactly what it does look like through the 'scope- and he launches into the standard lecture about why I should want to Go Up.

Smile? Yup, I can feel a true smile coming on. No doubt about it, I'm going to wake up this morning with a smile, 'cause right now I'm thinking deep about Dad, and the Death Cannon, and Dad's library of standard lectures. Last winter, when he was out of town for a week, me and Georgie started putzing with the telescope's brainbox. Discovered we could run a lightfiber from my bedroom to the deck, patch the Death Cannon straight into MoJo -my Miko-Gyoja 260/0/ /ex supermicro-and auto-aim the thing just by clicking on stuff from the encyclopedia. Pipe5 the images to any screen in the HouseSys, or better yet, compress 'em, save 'em, and look at them "later."

When I showed Dad what we'd done, his reaction was cla.s.sic. First, that little vein on the side of his forehead started throbbing. Then, his face shifted down to this deep magenta beet-look, and I thought sure he was gonna blow all his new heartgaskets.

And then, running on pure improv and with absolute no rehearsal at all, he proceeded to coredump a truly marvelous all-new version of his famous lecture, That's What's Wrong With You d.a.m.ned Kids. Brilliant performance. There are fathers and there are bio-parents; there are Olders and even a few dads; but only my old man can be so total, utter Dad.

Solid proof that I'm a mutant, you ask me.

A burst of static. A crackle, a buzz or two, and then the clock speaks up in that stupid pseudo s.p.a.ce-radio voice it uses: "Good morning, captain. Rise and shine. --crackle- It's oh-seven-hundred -pssht- and you are go for throttle up." I cop a glance at the clock, flag that the cargo doors are open and seven little 'nauts are out, spinning on their head buckets.

Okay, it's true morning, at last, official. No avoiding it any longer. I roll over onto my back, flip the pillow off my face, hear it land somewhere with a flumpf but it doesn't sound like it's. .h.i.t anything breakable. I brush the hair back from my face again, take a deep breath: standard morning smells are percolating up the stairs. De-licious hot microwaved plastic. Yummy bitter fresh-brewed caffix. True inspiring yeasty reek of irradiated sugar-glazed pastryoid. I sit up in bed, yawn, open both eyes at the same time, and finally, turn to my desk.

MoJo is black, silent. Dead.

In a nano I'm total awake. Covers fly everywhere as I roll off the bed, hit the floor barefoot, kick aside the dirty clothes and bounce to my desk. Already in my head I'm pleading as my fingers zip over the cables, testing, tugging, tweaking. Geez, don't let this be the Sikh Ambush virus again! I'm just about to crack open MoJo's CityLink box when I flag the6 Gyoja Gerbil is tottering, vague and dim, across the flatscreen. He turns slow, mouths some silent words, then bows deep and whacks the gong with his walking stick. No sound. A faint, dark dialog box pops open and my morning news start to scroll in, utter quiet and almost unreadable.

Oh. That's right; I forgot. I was up late last night, studying Death Cannon coordinates F0/140/ A22 15FF-Meghan Gianelli's bedroom window-and I turned the sound and contrast way down. Sighing relief, I spin them back up to normal, plop down in my chair, and re-exec the boot script.

The Gyoja Gerbil winks out a mo, winks back in, and bows again.

"Good morning, Mikhail Harris," he starts over. Inward, I shudder. Only Mom and my Miko-Gyoja 260/0/ /ex still call me Mikhail. Mom I can't do anything about, but one of these days me and Georgie are going to have to reburn the boot ROMs and grease the gerbil.

"Now checking CityNet mail for you," the Gyoja says. He closes his eyes, like he's concentrating; I bite my lip and tough it out. Just six more ROM commands to execute before the rodent surrenders control. Just six more, unless...

The Gyoja Gerbil frowns, freezes. A flashing red-border dialog box pops open; a hardware interrupt, generated by the CityLink deep security program. Warning! it says. Possible buffer contamination! I acknol the alert, bang into the hex monitor, dump out the contents of the flytrap and look it over.

No big deal. Two Dark Avenger viruses, one Holland Girl, an idiotsimple Gobbler and a mess of raw data that's probably an adfax that got sent to me by mistake. Typical CityNet wildlife. For a mo, I hesitate.

Maybe...?

Nah. Nice that the rodent was interrupted, but I don't dare try to look for a way around him with a copy of Dark Avenger in the CityLink.

I flush the buffer, and a nano later the Gyoja has seized control again.

"Now checking CityNet mail for you," he says.

Huh? That's odd. The samurai rat doesn't repeat himself, usual. I lean close, watch real careful.7 "I have found these messages waiting for you, Honorable Harrissan,"

he says, and he opens a window between his hands like he's pulling open a scroll. I start to read the first line.

The top of the window slips out of the gerbil's grip, slams shut on his right hand. Arterial blood jets bright red as little hairy fingers are lopped off neat, go tumbling down to the bottom of the screen.

What?

"Now checking CityNet mail for you," he says again, then freezes.

Jerks back to the start. "Now checking-" Freeze. Restart. "Now ch-"

Freeze.

I pounce on the keyboard, start banging out interrupts. Oh no, it is the Sikh Ambush virus! Break. Nothing. Ctrl-C. Nothing. Option E.

Nothing.

"Now-," he starts. Freeze.

Ctrl-Alt-right fist.

"Ch--ch--ch--"

Desperate and frantic, I take a deep breath, then stab my thumb down on the warmstart reboot b.u.t.ton. The Gyoja Gerbil's head explodes, blood and brains and teeth spraying truly gross all over the flatscreen.

Golly. It's never done that before.

Feeling just a little stunned, I sag back in my chair, put my chin in my left hand, and start wondering just what the h.e.l.l kind of virus I picked up this time. And why my flytrap didn't catch it. And what it's going to do to MoJo. I don't have to wonder for long; two little cartoon men in white uniforms-n.o.body out of any of my programs, I'm sure- shuffle out onto the screen, one pushing a garbage can on squeaky wheels, the other carrying a big shovel. They stop, shake their heads and tsk-tsk at the mess, then shovel what's left of the gerbil into the trash can and amble off. The flatscreen blanks.

I give it five seconds. Ten seconds. I'm reaching for the manual reset b.u.t.ton when a new character darts out onto the screen. This one's a robopunk-a real techno looking 'bot with a blue chrome mohawk-and he stops centerscreen, looks around furtive, then whips out a can of8 spray paint and leaves me a hot green message: CRACKERS BUDDY-BOO 8ER.

Oh, shiite.

The 'bot vanishes. The message hangs there a mo, doing the slow fade. "d.a.m.n," I say, quiet. Then a little more aggressive. "d.a.m.n!" I look around as if afraid someone's looking over my shoulder, turn back to MoJo, and kick the leg of my desk. "Oh, d.a.m.n!" The message finishes its fade and I jerk into action, bouncing up out of my chair, punching power switches, yanking cables. CityLink box switched off and unplugged. NetLine yanked, on both ends. HouseFiber unplugged.

"d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n!" I hesitate a mo over MoJo's master power switch. It's been almost two years since the last time I shut him off utter cold.

I scowl, and hit the switch. Then I yank the power cord for good measure.

It wasn't a virus, it was a message from Rayno. He caught somebody else poking around in OurNet. And if that's true/true, I'm in trouble so deep I need a snorkel.9

Chapter 0/ 1.

Soon as I'd finished with the total disconnect, I tore off my cosmojammies and threw them in the corner, grabbed my blue spatterzag jumpsuit off the floor and zipped it on, then dug out my blitz yellow hightops from under the bed and laced them up loose. Subroutining off to the bathroom for a mo to flush my bladder buffer and run a brush across my teeth, I popped back into my bedroom, threw my video slate and a couple textbook ROMs into my backpack, and hit the stairs flying.

Mom and Dad were still at breakfast when I bounced into the kitchen. "Good Morning, Mikhail," said Mom with a smile. "You were up so late last night I thought I wouldn't see you before you caught your tram."

"Had a tough program to crack," I lied.

"Well," she said, "now you can sit down and have a decent breakfast." She turned around to pull another pod of steaming m.u.f.finoids out of the microwave and slap them down on the table.

"If you'd do your schoolwork when you're supposed to, you wouldn't have to cram at the end of the semester," Dad growled from behind his caffix and faxsheet. I sloshed some juice in a plastic gla.s.s, gulped it down, and started for the door.

"What?" Mom asked. "That's all the breakfast you're going to have?"

"Haven't got time," I said. "Gotta get to school early to see if the program checks." Bobbing around her, I faked a dribble, lobbed the empty gla.s.s into the sink. Two points.

She looked at me, shook her head, and took a slow step forward like she was going to block me. "You're not going to school dressed like that, I hope?"10 "Aw, Mom." Ducking back around the table, I grabbed a m.u.f.fin- rice bran, sawdust and rabbit raisin, I think.

"I mean, look at you, you're nothing but a ma.s.s of wrinkles. Where did you find that jumpsuit anyway, in the laundry hamper?"

"No, Mom." Faking a step back towards the hall door, I stuffed the m.u.f.fin into my backpack and velcroed the pouch.

She followed the feint. "And what about your hair? I don't mind if you wear it long, but honestly Mikhail, it looks like there's something nesting in it."

Dad lowered his faxsheet long enough to peer over the top edge.

"Kid needs a flea bath and a haircut, if you ask me." Oh, perfect, Dad.

Just the exact reaction I wanted. That's why I got the horsemane style!

Mom turned on Dad and spoke to quiet him-ragging on me before school is her job-but I didn't hear the rest 'cause I'd seen my opening, taken it, and was already out the door and halfway across the porch.

"Don't forget to boot m.u.f.fy!" Mom yelled after me.

Hand on the outside doork.n.o.b, I stopped, turned around. "Yes, mother." Taking a quick scan around, I spotted Mom's Mutt lying in the corner, curled up around the battery charger. Oh, I wanted to boot that dog all right! But then, foot c.o.c.ked, I remembered m.u.f.fy was a lot heavier than it looked and decided I didn't need the pain. So I bent over, lifted the dog's stubby little tail, and unplugged the power feed.

"Arf," m.u.f.fy said. It stood up and began twitching through its servo diagnostics. I gave the charger cord a sharp yank, watched it retract.

"Arf," m.u.f.fy said again, and it began toddling towards the kitchen. I turned around, gave one last fleeting thought to the cheery mind image of m.u.f.fy being drop-kicked into the mock oranges, and then zipped out the door.

I caught the transys for school, just in case Mom and Dad were watching. Two blocks down the line I got off and caught the northbound tram, and then I started off on a big loop that kept me off the routes Mom and Dad used to get to work and took me back past home and in the complete opposite direction from school. Half an hour and six11 transfers later I came whipping into Buddy's All-Nite Burgers. Rayno was sitting in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was0/ 7:55:23 and I'd beat Georgie and Lisa there.

"What's on line?" I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from Rayno. He just looked up at me, eyes piercing blue through his fine, white-blond eyebrows, and I knew better than to ask again.

I sat down. I shut up. Whatever it was had to be important, to make it worth dumping MoJo like that, but there was no point trying to talk to Rayno when he was clammed, so I locked eyes on him. He went back to looking at his caffix, taking the occasional sip. For a mo I had this crazy idea he was being too derzky to talk just 'cause he wanted me to flag his new hair. This week it was bleached Utter Aryan White, side-shaved, and stiffed out into The Wedge. Geez, it did look sharp!

Of course it did. Rayno always looked sharp. Rayno was seventeen, and a junior. He wore scruff black leather and flash plastic; he kept his style current to the nanosecond and cranked to the max. Rayno was derzky realitized.