Cyberpunk Read Free Page B

closed his eyes, tilted his head back, raised his voice. “ And
    lose the goddam holo !” Buddy McFry vanished. Rayno went back to
    scowling at his caffix.
    I decided to see how long it’d take him to time out.
    At0/ 8:0/0/ :20/ Lisa zagged in, her lank blonde hair swinging in lazy
    circles, her feet moving in that slow, twitchy walk that meant she had
    her earcorks in and tuned for music. She was wearing her mirrored
    contacts today, which gave her eyes a truly appropriate utter vacant
    look; Lisa is Rayno’s girl, or at least she hopes she is. I can see why.
    Rayno’s seventeen, and a junior—a year older than Georgie, two years
    and a grade up on Lisa. And where Georgie tends to fat and a touch of
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    dweebism, like most true cyberpunks (and little Mikey Harris just ain’t
    in the game, no matter how gifted his headworks are supposed to be),
    Rayno is the Master Controller of our little gang and he has looks and
    style to burn.
    So, no surprise Lisa’s got it locked for him. Every move she makes
    says she’s begging for it, but he’s too robo, too tough to notice. He
    dances with himself; he won’t even touch her. She bopped over to the
    booth and slid into her seat next to Rayno, trying hard to get a thigh
    under his hand. He just put both hands on his caffix cup and didn’t give
    her so much as a blink.
    For a flicker, Lisa looked miserable. There she was, wearing her best
    white tatterblouse and no bra, and she couldn’t even get Rayno to look at
    her. I’m not so good at robo yet so I copped a quick, guilty peek down
    her cleavage, but it’s certified Boolean true/true she wasn’t flashing that
    skin for me. Basic rules of the game: Sharp haircut beats 160/ IQ.
    Those who can’t play, heckle. I opened my mouth to tell her she’d
    make more progress on Rayno if she had a cleavage to show off, first,
    but killed my words in the output queue. Her fingernails were getting
    long and nasty and that green nailpolish looked toxic.
    Then the DJ in her head zapped out another tune and her miserable
    look flickered off. She went back to face dancing. Never even noticed it
    when the little trademark sample of fifties music swooped by and Buddy
    McFry came dancing on out from behind the napkin dispenser.
    “Good morning and welcome to Buddy’s!” the holo started.
    “We are still waiting for our fourth,” Rayno growled, low and
    sullen. You’d of thought he said I love you forever , the way Lisa’s eyes
    lit up. Buddy McFry zapped off in mid-step.
    Rayno went back to glaring into his caffix. Lisa took over the job of
    locking eyes on him. I watched her watch him watch his caffix for a
    while, Rayno looking like a warped black mantis in her mirrored pinball
    eyes, and couldn’t decide if I should yawn or puke, she was being so
    uncool and glandular.
    Georgie still wasn’t there at 8:0/ 5:0/0/ . Rayno checked his watch one
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    more time, then finally looked up. “Hellgate’s been cracked,” he said,
    soft.
    I swore. Georgie and I’d spent a lot of time working up a truly
    wicked secure for Hellgate. It was the sole entry point to OurNet, and we
    had some real strong reasons for wanting to keep that little piece of the
    virtual universe ultra-private.
    Not from other cyberkids. They were just minor-league nuisances.
    We could deal with them. It was our parents we were worried about:
    They would truly smoke their motherboards if they ever found out what
    we were really up to, and now a parent—or somebody with no finesse,
    anyway—was messing with OurNet.
    “Georgie’s old man?” I asked.
    “Looks that way.”
    I swore again. It figured. Most of OurNet was virtual; not real
    hardware at all. The only absolute physical piece, and therefore the only
    real vulnerable point, was Hellgate.
    Which also happened to be Georgie’s old man’s Honeywell-Bull
    office system.
    For a mo I felt hot, angry. Why couldn’t