Shareware License Cyberpunk, by Bruce Bethke Page 1 of 2 This book file is distributed as shareware. You may freely copy, email, post on a web site, or otherwise distribute this book file, provided you observe the specific license conditions listed below. If you enjoy this book and want to support this experiment in electronic publishing, please send a check or money order for $5 (USD) to: Bruce Bethke P.O. Box 28094 Oakdale, MN 55128 USA If you do not have access to US funds, please send the approximate equivalent in your local currency. Prizes will be awarded for the most colorful, exotic, and/or amusing bank notes. Specific License Conditions 1. The contents of this book file are the copyrighted property of Bruce Bethke. This book is NOT in the public domain. All copies of this file must retain this authorship statement and copyright information. 2. All copies of this book file must retain this shareware license statement. 3. The content of this book file may not be altered in any material way. 4. You may print one (1) paper copy of this file for your personal use. 5. You may NOT print this file in bound book form, except by express written agreement with the author. Shareware License Cyberpunk, by Bruce Bethke Page 2 of 2 6. You may NOT create derivative works based upon this work, except by express written agreement with the author. “Derivative works” includes language translations, ports to other file types, adaptations for live performance or other media, works of fiction based upon the characters or situations described in this work, or other forms of derivation and/or adaptation yet to be identified. 7. Read #6 again. I’d love to have people port this thing to Palm Pilot format or translate it into other languages, but I want to KNOW about such work BEFORE it’s done. 8. No warranty is express or implied. The reader assumes all risks and agrees to hold the author harmless in the event of computer damages, real or imagined, that may or may not be attributed to receipt or use of this file. This file as originally released was thoroughly scanned and determined to be virus-free, but Lord knows there are enough sociopathic a-holes out there and no doubt someone is working right now on an embedded .pdf virus. 9. In the event of litigation arising from the terms of this license agreement, all parties agree that the terms of this agreement shall be adjudicated according to the laws of the state of Minnesota, republic of the United States of America, Planet Earth, Quadrant Alpha, Galaxy Milky Way. In the event that any provision of this license agreement is held null and void, the remaining provisions shall remain in effect. 10. Can you believe I have to include this kind of crap in a book that I’m giving away for free? Cyberpunk (BETA) A novel by Bruce Bethke ©2001 Bruce Bethke All Rights Reserved This version ©2001 Bruce Bethke. All Rights Reserved. Portions of this work have been previously published in different formats. This work incorporates material copyrighted in 1980, 1982, 1988, and 1989 by Bruce Bethke. Inquiries regarding publication and/or subsidiary rights to this material should be directed to: Ashley D. Grayson Ashley Grayson Literary Agency 1342 18th Street San Pedro, CA 90732 (310) 548-4672 This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living, dead, or undead (“We prefer the term postmortal”), is purely accidental. Cyberpunk 1.0 1 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 muffins 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 until 0/7:0/0/: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 space shuttle comes out from behind the left ©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke Cyberpunk 1.0 2 edge of the clock. Chick. Chick. Chick. Stubby white wings flash as the ugly blunt thing banks to pass 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 Classic 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 space 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 space, Mikey. Science is future, honorable son. Being gifted is not enough; you must study ‘til eyes bleed, claw way through Examination Hell, 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 butt—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 Russians kill a few more people trying to get to Mars again. Boy oh boy. When you’re 13.75 years old and almost a sophomore in high school, you start to think about these things. ©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke Cyberpunk 1.0 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 scrape 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.