cybernov

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Cyberpunk 1.0

(BETA)

A novel by

Bruce Bethke

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 transmortal”), 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 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 space shuttle comes out from behind the left

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 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 sophomore in high

school, you start to think about these things.

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. 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 Management

Cyberpunk 1.0 4

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 space 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

glass could be half expensive enough for the trophy son of David

Richard Harris, Fuji-DynaRand’s Fuku 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. Pipe

Cyberpunk 1.0 5

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 classic. 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 Damned 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 space-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 hit 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 the

Cyberpunk 1.0 6

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 idiot-

simple 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.

Cyberpunk 1.0 7

“I have found these messages waiting for you, Honorable Harris-

san,” 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 button. 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 Hell 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—nobody 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 button 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 of

Cyberpunk 1.0 8

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. “Damn,” I say, quiet. Then a little more aggressive. “Damn!” I

look around as if afraid someone’s looking over my shoulder, turn back

to MoJo, and kick the leg of my desk. “Oh, damn!” 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.

“Damn, damn, damn!” 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.

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摘要：

Cyberpunk1.0Thisversion©1998BruceBethke.AllRightsReserved.Cyberpunk1.01©1982,1998BruceBethke0/0/:WarmstartOkay,soit’smorning.Sparrowsarearguinginthedwarfmaplesoutsidemybedroomwindow.Metalliccoughsandsputtersechodownthestreet;oldmanXiangmusthavescoredsomepirategasolineandtriedtostarthisMercedesagain....

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