Paul Di Filippo & Bruce Sterling - The Scabs Progress

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2024-12-22 0 0 206.72KB 41 页 5.9玖币

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The Scab's Progress

by Paul Di Filippo and Bruce Sterling

The federal bio-containment center was a diatom the size of the Disney Matterhorn.

It perched on fractal struts in a particularly charmless district of Nevada, where the

waterless white sands swarmed with toxic vermin.

The entomopter scissored its dragonfly wings, conveying Ribo Zombie above the

desert wastes. This was always the best part of the program: the part where Ribo

Zombie lovingly checked out all his cool new gear before launching into action. As a

top-ranking scab from the otaku-pirate underground, Ribo Zombie owned reactive

gloves with slashproof ligaments and sandwiched Kevlar-polysaccharide. He owned

a mother-of-pearl crash helmet, hung with daring insouciance on the scaled wall of

the 'mopter's cockpit. And those Nevada desert boots!—like something built by

Tolkien orcs with day-jobs at Nike.

Accompanying the infamous RZ was his legendary and much-merchandised familiar,

Skratchy Kat. Every scab owned a familiar: they were the totem animals of the

gene-pirate scene. The custom dated back to the birth of the scab subculture, when

tree-spiking Earth Firsters and obsessive dog breeders had jointly discovered the

benefits of outlaw genetic engineering.

With a flash of emerald eyes the supercat rose from the armored lap of the daring

scab. Skratchy Kat had some much cooler name in the Japanese collectors' market.

He'd been designed in Tokyo, and was a deft Pocket-Monster commingling of eight

spliced species of felines and viverines, with the look, the collector cachet, and

(judging by his stuffed-toy version) plenty of the smell of a civet cat. Ribo Zombie,

despite frequent on-screen cameos by busty-babe groupies, had never enjoyed any

steady feminine relationship. What true love there was in his life flowed between

man and cat.

Clickable product-placement hot-tags were displayed on the 'mopter screens as Ribo

Zombie's aircraft winged in for the kill. The ads sold magnums of cheap, post-

Greenhouse Reykjavík Champagne. Ringside tix to a Celebrity Deathmatch

(splatter-shields extra). Entomopter rentals in Vegas, with a rapid, low-cost divorce

optional.

Then, wham! Inertia hit the settling aircraft, gypsum-sand flew like pulverized

wallboard, and the entomopter's chitinous canopy accordioned open. Ribo Zombie

vaulted to the glistening sands, clutching his cat to his armored bosom. He set the

beast free with a brief, comradely exchange of meows, then sealed his facemask,

pulled a monster pistol, and plucked a retro-chic pineapple grenade from his

bandolier.

A pair of crystalline robot snakes fell to concussive explosions. Alluring vibrators

disoriented the numerous toxic scorpions in the vicinity. Three snarling jackalopes

fell to a well-aimed hail of dumdums. Meanwhile the dauntless cat, whose hide

beneath fluffy fur was as tough as industrial Teflon, had found a way through the

first hedge-barrier of barrel cacti.

The pair entered a maze of cholla. The famously vicious Southwestern cholla cactus,

whose sausage-link segments bore thorns the size of fishhooks, had been rumored

from time immemorial to leap free and stab travelers from sheer spite. A soupçon of

Venus flytrap genes had turned this Pecos Pete tall-tale vaporware into grisly

functionality. Ribo Zombie had to opt for brute force: the steely wand of a back-

mounted flamethrower leapt into his wiry combat-gloves. Ignited in a pupil-searing

blast, the flaming mutant cholla whipped and flopped like epileptic spaghetti. Then

RZ and the faithful Skratchy were clambering up the limestone leg of the Federal

cache.

Anyone who had gotten this far could be justly exposed to the worst and most

glamorous gizmos ever cooked up by the Softwar Department's Counter-

Bioterrorism Corps.

The ducts of the diatom structure yawned open and deployed a lethal arsenal of

spore-grenade launchers, strangling vegetable bolas, and whole glittering clouds of

hotwired fleas and mosquitos. Any scab worth his yeast knew that those insect

vectors were stuffed to bursting with swift and ghastly illnesses, pneumonic plague

and necrotizing fasciitis among the friendlier ones.

"This must be the part where the cat saves him," said Tupper McClanahan, all cozy

in her throw rug on her end of the couch.

Startled out of his absorption, yet patiently indulgent, Fearon McClanahan froze the

screen with a tapped command to the petcocks on the feedlines. "What was that,

darling? I thought you were reading."

"I was." Smiling, Tupper held up a vintage Swamp Thing comic that had cost fully

ten percent of one month's trust-fund check. "But I always enjoy the parts of this

show that feature the cat. Remember when we clicked on those high-protein kitty

treats, during last week's cat sequence? Weeble loved those things."

Fearon looked down from the ergonomic couch to the spotless bulk of his snoring

pig, Weeble. Weeble had outgrown the size and weight described in his

documentation, but he made a fine hassock.

"Weeble loves anything we feed him. His omnivorous nature is part of his factory

specs, remember? I told you we'd save a ton on garbage bills."

"Sweetie, I never complain about Weeble. Weeble is your familiar, so Weeble is fine.

I've only observed that it might be a good idea if we got a bigger place."

Fearon disliked being interrupted while viewing his favorite outlaw stealth download.

He positively squirmed whenever Tupper sneakily angled around the subject of a

new place with more room. More room meant a nursery. And a nursery meant a

child. Fearon swerved to a change of topic.

"How can you expect Skratchy Kat to get Ribo Zombie out of this fix? Do you have

any idea what those flying bolas do to human flesh?"

"The cat gets him out of trouble every time. Kids love that cat."

"Look, honey: kids are not the target demographic. This show isn't studio-

greenlighted or even indie-syndicated, okay? You know as well as I do that this is

outlaw media. Totally underground guerrilla infotainment, virally distributed. There

are laws on the books—unenforced, sure, but still extant—that make it illegal for us

even to watch this thing. After all, Ribo Zombie is a biological terrorist who's

robbing a Federal stash!"

"If it's not a kid's show, why is that cute little cartoon in the corner of the screen?"

"That's his grafitti icon! The sign of his street-wise authenticity."

Tupper gazed at him with limpid spousal pity. "Then who edits all his raw footage

and adds the special effects?"

"Oh, well, that's just the Vegas Mafia. The Mafia keeps up with modern times: no

more Rat Pack crooners and gangsta rappers! Nowadays they cut licensing deals

with freeware culture heroes like Ribo Zombie, lone wolf recombinants bent on

bringing hot goo to the masses."

Tupper waved her comic as a visual aid. "I still bet the cat's gonna save him.

Because none of that makes any difference to the archetypical narrative dynamics."

Fearon sighed. He opened a new window on his gelatinous screen and accessed

certain data. "Okay, look. You know what runs security on Federal Biosequestration

Sites like that one? Military-grade, laminated, mouse brains. You know how smart

that stuff is? A couple of cubic inches of murine brain has more processing power

than every computer ever deployed in the twentieth century. Plus, mouse brain is

unhackable. Computer viruses, no problem. Electromagnetic pulse doesn't affect it.

No power source to disrupt, since neurons run on blood sugar. That stuff is

indestructible."

Tupper shrugged. "Just turn your show back on."

Skratchy was poised at a vulnerable crack in the diatom's roof. The cat began

copiously to pee.

When the trickling urine reached the olfactory sensors wired to the mouse brains,

the controlling network went berserk. Ancient murine anti-predator instincts

swamped the cybernetic instructions, triggering terrified flight responses. Mis-aimed

spore bomblets thudded harmlessly to the soil, whizzing bolas wreaked havoc

through the innocent vegetation below, and vent ports spewed contaminated steam

and liquid nitrogen.

Cursing the zany but dangerous fusillade, Ribo Zombie set to work with a back-

mounted hydraulic can opener.

Glum and silent, Fearon gripped his jaw. His hooded eyes glazed over as Ribo

Zombie crept through surreal diorama of waist-high wells, HVAC systems and

plumbing. Every flick of Ribo Zombie's hand torch revealed a glimpse of some new

and unspeakable mutant wonder, half concealed in ambient support fluids: yellow

gruel, jade-colored hair gel, blue oatmeal, ruby maple syrup.…

"Oh, honey," said Tupper at last, "don't take it so hard."

"You were right," Fearon grumbled. His voice rose. "Is that what you want me to

say? You were right! You're always right!"

"It's just my skill with semiotic touchstones, which I've derived from years of

reading graphic novels. But look, dear, here's the part you always love, when he

finally lays his hands on the wetware. Honey, look at him stealing that weird

cantaloupe with the big throbbing arteries on it. Now he'll go back to his clottage

and clump, just like he does every episode, and sooner or later something really

uptaking and neoteric will show up on your favorite auction site."

"Like I couldn't brew up stuff twice as potent myself."

"Of course you could, dear. Especially now, since we can afford the best equipment.

With my inheritance kicking in, we can devote your dad's legacy to your hobby. All

that stock your dad left can go straight to your hardware fetish, while my money

allows us to ditch this creepy old condo and buy a new modern house. Duckback

roof, slowglass windows, olivine patio—"Tupper sighed deeply and dramatically.

"Real quality, Fearon."

· · · · ·

Predictably, Malvern Brakhage showed up at their doorstep in the company of

disaster.

"Rogue mitosis, Fearon my man. They've shut down Mixogen and called out the

HazMat Squad."

"You're kidding? Mixogen? I thought they followed code."

"Hell no! The outbreak's all over downtown. Just thought I'd drop by for a newsy

look at your high-bandwidth feed."

Fearon gazed with no small disdain on his bullet-headed fellow scab. Malvern had

the thin fixed grin of a live medical student in a room full of cadavers. He wore his

customary black leather lab coat and baggy cargo pants, their buttoned pockets

bulging with Ziploc baggies of semi-legal jello.

"It's Malvern!" he yelled at the kitchen, where Tupper was leafing through

catalogues.

"How about some nutriceuticals?" said Malvern. "Our mental edges require

immediate sharpening." Malvern pulled his slumbering weasel, Spike, from a lab

coat pocket and set it on his shoulder. The weasel—biotechnically speaking, Spike

was mostly an ermine—immediately became the nicest-looking thing about the

man. Spike's lustrous fur gave Malvern the dashing air of a Renaissance prince, if

you recalled that Renaissance princes were mostly unprincipled bush-league tyrants

who would poison anyone within reach.

Malvern ambled hungrily into the kitchen.

"How have you been, Malvern?" said Tupper brightly.

"I'm great, babe." Malvern pulled a clamp-topped German beer bottle from his

jacket. "You up for a nice warm brewski?"

"Don't drink that," Fearon warned his wife.

"Brewed it personally," said Malvern, hurt. "I'll just leave it here in case you change

your mind." Malvern plonked the heavy bottle onto the scarred Formica.

Raised a rich, self-assured, decorous girl, Tupper possessed the good breeding and

manners to tolerate Malvern's flagrant transgressive behavior. Fearon remembered

when he, too, had received adoring looks from Tupper—as a bright idealist who

understood the true, liberating potential of biotech, an underground scholar who

bowed to none in his arcane mastery of plasmid vectors. Unlike Malvern, whose

scab popularity was mostly due to his lack of squeamishness.

Malvern was louche and farouche, so, as was his wont, he began looting Tupper's

kitchen fridge. "Liberty's gutters are crawling!" Malvern declaimed, fingersnapping a

bit to suit his with-it scab-rap. "It's a bug-crash of awesome proportions, and I urge

forthwith we reap some peptides from the meltdown."

"Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted," countered Fearon. He herded the

unmannerly scab back to the parlor.

With deft stabs of his carpalled fingertips, Fearon used the parlor wallscreen to

access Fusing Nuclei—the all-biomed news site favored by the happening hipsters of

scabdom.

Tupper, pillar of support that she was, soon slid in with a bounty of hotwired

snackfood. Instinctively, both men shared with their familiars, Fearon dropping

creamy tidbits to his pig while Malvern reached salty gobbets up and back to his

neck-hugging weasel.

Shoulder to shoulder on the parlor couch, Malvern and Fearon fixed their jittering

attention on the unfolding urban catastrophe.

The living pixels in the electrojelly cohered into the familiar image of Wet Willie,

FN's star business reporter. Wet Willie, dashingly clad in his customary splatterproof

trenchcoat, had framed himself in the shot of a residential Miami skyscraper. The

pastel Neo-Deco walls were sheathed in pearly slime. Wriggling like a nautch

dancer, the thick, undulating goo gleamed in Florida's Greenhouse sunlight. Local

bystanders congregated in their flowered shirts, sun hats, and sandals, gawking

from outside the crowd-control pylons. The tainted skyscraper was under careful

attack by truck-mounted glorp cannons, their nozzles channeling high-pressure

fingers against the slimy pink walls.

"That's a major outbreak all right," said Fearon. "Since when was Liberty City

clearstanced for wet production?"

"As if," chuckled Malvern.

Wet Willie was killing network lagtime with a patch of infodump. "Liberty City was

once an impoverished slum. That was before Miami urbstanced into the liveliest

nexus of the modern Immunosance, fueled by low-rent but ingenious Caribbean

bioneers. When super-immune systems became the hottest somatic upgrade since

osteojolt, Liberty City upgraded into today's thriving district of artlofts and

hotshops.

"But today that immuconomic quality of life is threatened! The ninth floor of this

building houses a startup named Mixogen. The cause of this rampaging outbreak

remains speculative, except that the fearsome name of Ribo Zombie is already

whispered by knowing insiders."

"I might have known," grunted Malvern.

Fearon clicked the RZ hotlink. Ribo Zombie's ninja-masked publicity photo appeared

on the network's vanity page. "Ribo Zombie, the Legendary King of scabs—whose

thrilling sub rosa exploits are brought to you each week by Fusing Nuclei, in strict

accordance with the revised Freedom of Information Act and without legal or ethical

endorsement! Click here to join the growing horde of cutting-edge bioneers who

enjoy weekly shipments of his liberated specimens direct to their small office/home

office wetware labs.…"

Fearon valved off the nutrient flowline to the screen and stood abruptly up,

spooking the sensitive Weeble. "That showboating scumbag! You'd think he'd

invented scabbing! I hate him! Let's scramble, Mal."

"Yo!" concurred Malvern. "Let's bail forthwith, and bag something hot from the

slop."

Fearon assembled his scab gear from closets and shelves throughout the small

apartment, Weeble loyally dogging his heels. The process took some time, since a

scab's top-end hardware determined his peer ranking in the demimonde of scabdom

(a peer ranking stored by retrovirus, then collated globally by swapping saliva-laden

tabs of blotter paper).

Devoted years of feral genetic hobbyism had brought Fearon a veritable galaxy of

condoms, shrinkwrap, blotter kits, polymer resins, phase gels, reagents, femto-

injectors serum vials, canisters, aerosols, splat-pistols, whole bandoliers of

buckybombs, padded cases, gloves, goggles, netting, cameras, tubes, cylinder

dispensers of pliofilm—the whole assemblage tucked with a fly fisherman's neurotic

care into an intricate system of packs, satchels, and strap-ons.

Tupper watched silently, her expression neutral shading to displeased. Even the

dense and tactless Malvern could sense the marital tension.

"Lemme boot up my car. Meet you behind the wheel, Fearo my pard."

Tupper accompanied Fearon to the apartment door, still saying nothing as her man

clicked together disassembled instruments, untelescoped his sampling staff,

tightened buckles across chest and hips, and mated sticky-backed equipment to

special patches on his vest and splashproof chaps.

Rigged out to his satisfaction, Fearon leaned in for a farewell kiss. Tupper merely

offered her cheek.

"Aw, come on, honey, don't be that way! You know a man's gotta follow his bliss:

which in my special case is a raw, hairy-eyed lifestyle on the bleeding edge of the

genetic frontier."

"Fearon McClanahan, if you come back smeared with colloid, you're not setting one

foot onto my clean rug."

"I'll really wash up this time, I promise."

"And pick up some fresh goat's-milk prestogurt!"

"I'm with the sequence."

Fearon dashed and clattered down the stairs, his nutraceutically enhanced mind

already filled with plans and anticipations. Weeble barreled behind.

Malvern's algal-powered roadster sat by the curb, its fuelcell thrumming. Malvern

emptied the tapering trunk, converting it into an open-air rumble seat for Weeble,

who bounded in like a jet-propelled fifty-liter drum. The weasel Spike occupied a

crash-hammock slung behind the driver's seat. Fearon wedged himself into the

passenger's seat, and they were off with a pale electric scream.

After shattering a random variety of Miami traffic laws, the two scabs departed

Malvern's street-smart vehicle to creep and skulk the last two blocks to the ongoing

bio-Chernobyl. The federal swab authorities had thrown their usual cordon in place,

enough to halt the influx of civilian lookyloos, but penetrating the perimeter was

child's play for well-equipped scabs. Fearon and Malvern simply sprayed themselves

and their lab animals with chameleon-shifting shrinkwrap, then strolled through the

impotent ring of ultrasonic pylons. They then crept through the shattered glass,

found the code-obligatory wheelchair access, and laboriously sneaked up to the

ninth floor.

"Well, we're inside just fine," said Fearon, puffing for breath through the shredded

shrinkwrap on his lips.

Malvern helped himself to a secretary's abandoned lunch. "Better check Fusing

Nuclei for word on the fates of our rivals."

Fearon consulted his handheld. "They just collared Harry the Brewer.

'Impersonating a Disease-Control Officer.' "

"What a lack of gusto and panache. That guy's just not serious."

Malvern peered down streetward through a goo-dripping window. The glorp-cannon

salvos had been supplemented by strafing ornithopter runs of uptake inhibitors and

counter-metabolizers. The battling federal defenders of humanity's physiological

integrity were using combined-arms tactics. Clearly the forces of law and order were

sensing victory. They usually did.

"How much of this hot glop you think we ought to kipe?" Malvern asked.

"Well, all of it. Everything Weeble can eat."

"You don't mind risking ol' Weeble?"

"He's not a pig for nothing, you know. Besides, I just upgraded his digestive tract."

Fearon scratched the pig affectionately.

Malvern Velcroed his weasel Spike into the animal's crittercam. The weasel eagerly

scampered off on point, as Malvern offered remote guidance and surveillance with

his handheld.

"Out-of-Control Kevin uses video bees," remarked Fearon as they trudged forward

with a rattle of sampling equipment. "Little teensy cameras mounted on their teensy

insect backs. It's an emergent network phenomenon, he says."

"That's just Oldstyle Silicon Valley," Malvern dismissed. "Besides, a weasel never

gets sucked into a jet engine."

The well-trained Spike had nailed the target, and the outlaw wetware was fizzing

like cheap champagne. It was a wonder that the floor of the high-rise had withstood

the sheer weight of criminal mischief. Mixogen was no mere R&D lab. It was a full-

scale production facility. Some ingenious soul had purchased the junked remains of

an Orlando aquasport resort, all the pumps, slides, and water-park sprinklers.

Kiddie wading pools had been retrofitted with big gooey glaciers of serum support

gel. The plastic fishtanks were filled to overflowing with raw biomass. Metastasizing

cells had backed up into the genetic moonshine somehow, causing a violent bloom

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TheScab'sProgressbyPaulDiFilippoandBruceSterlingThefederalbio-containmentcenterwasadiatomthesizeoftheDisneyMatterhorn.ItperchedonfractalstrutsinaparticularlycharmlessdistrictofNevada,wherethewaterlesswhitesandsswarmedwithtoxicvermin.Theentomopterscissoreditsdragonflywings,conveyingRiboZombieabovethe...

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