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Line Noiz Issue 20
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I S S U E - @ ) S E P T M B E R 1 0 , 1 9 9 4
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I S S U E - @ ) A U G U S T 2 6 , 1 9 9 4
: File !
: Intro to Issue 20
: Billy Biggs <ae687@freenet.carleton.ca>
: File @
: The Church of the Cyber-Spiritualists
: Andrew Davison <ad@cs.mu.oz.au>
: File #
: Square One - Part 6
: Kipp Lightburn <ah804@freenet.carleton.ca>
: File $
: Heavy Duty - Chapter 2
: C.McLean-Campbell <cmc@cs.strath.ac.uk>
: File %
: Chiba City Blues Issue 1
: Intro to CCB
: Joshua Lellis <joshua@server.dmccorp.com>
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File - !
We've added a new sub-zine of Line Noiz, Chiba City Blues. It acts as an
extension of Line Noiz published science fiction and alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo.
We plan to feature reviews, stories, interviews etc.
Here's to the 20th.
-Billy Biggs, editor.
***** N o T E ******
- We have been experiencing problems with our subscription list. If you
find that the following subscription instructions are not working then
e-mail me at ae687@freenet.carleton.ca and I'll see what I can do....
=-*-= Subscription Info =-*-=
o Subscriptions can be obtained by sending mail to: dodger@fubar.bk.psu.edu
With the words: Subscription LineNoiz <your address>
In the body of the letter.
o Back Issues can be recieved by sending mail to the same address with the
words BACK ISSUES in the subject.
=-*-= Submission Info =-*-=
o Please send any submissions to me: ae687@freenet.carleton.ca
o We accept Sci-Fi, opinions, reviews and anything else of interest.
o Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit! Submit!
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File - @
From: ad@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Andrew Davison)
The Church of the Cyber-Spiritualists
Andrew Davison
Email: ad@cs.mu.oz.au
Australia is a land of frontiers, where pioneers live and die in a
continual battle with untamed, primordial nature. In the late 20th
century, these frontiers have migrated from the physical plain to the
informational domains -- fractious natives, ferocious fauna, and
life-threatening landscapes have been replaced by uncontrollable data,
fast-and-loose abstractions lost on a multi-lane informational
highway.
However, just as Australia produced a hardy breed who conquered the
physical terrain, it has now thrown up new explorers who are unafraid
to gaze into the cybernetic maelstrom. These 21st century visionaries
call themselves the cyber-spiritualists.
The cyber-spiritualist movement began quietly, when its co-founder and
cyber-guru, Pungent Love Ph.D, bought a derelict warehouse in the
deprived area of Melbourne known as Parkville. Nothing much was heard
of the cultists until its members (the cyber-soothsayers) started
appearing on street corners, handing out free admission tickets to
raves held in their sprawling warehouse complex.
The cyber-soothsayers soon became a recognised part of Melbourne life
-- their colourful melange of tie-dyed t-shirts and industrial
attitudes contrasted with the grey business-suited drones of the city
centre. Not unsurprisingly, a generation of teenagers, dispossessed by
the recession and a society fixated on its own faded past, turned to
the life-affirming clarion call: 'If you haven't a life, get Artificial
Life'. The kids simply wanted to partake in the cyber-spiritualist's
hip musical soirees, where post-modern Techno met a hysterical
perversion of their parent's bland LPs (e.g. Manilow and The Bee Gees
played backwards at maddeningly fast speeds). But the
cyber-spiritualists had a grander aim than the creation of a new
musical nomenclature, they wished to give the aimless young new goals,
objectives, a raison d'etre.
It was with this sketchy history of the cyber-spiritualists in mind,
that I contacted Pungent Love for an interview. I was taken aback when
my email to pungent@love.au.oz was answered in the positive. I met him
later that night at their warehouse, in time to experience the Winter
solstice cyber-rave, the major dance event of those dreary, endlessly
dark months.
Pungent approached me in the poorly lit entrance hall, clad in a
psychedelic kaftan embroidered with printed circuit board patterns (the
68000 I think). He is a short man, perhaps 5 feet tall, with the gaunt
angular build of an aspiring shaman. His slim body houses an awesome
intensity, which emanates from his piercing blue eyes, and is enhanced
by his striking hairstyle -- rusty dreadlocks on the left and steely
grey crew cut on the right.
He spoke: 'You have arrived, as I foretold. It is good that you are
here at our threshold, since your thoughts are also at a threshold, one
that leads to cyber-spiritualism'. His voice echoed amongst the
crumbling masonry.
After a short breath, he continued: 'You may wonder why I have honoured
you. It is simple, the world is fearful of what it cannot understand,
and fear begets hatred. To the eyes of the non-believer
cyber-spiritualism offers only fear. They are wrong and their erroneous
views must be corrected. I have chosen you to report my words.' At this
point, he raised his hirsute hands above his head and pointed them at
me.
He started again: 'Cyber-spiritualism is a multi-faceted gem which may
be viewed by ordinary mortals, but can only be grokked by a believer. I
will facilitate your knowledge of cyber-spiritualism but, flawed as you
are, you may never understand it. I have decided to show you three of
the facets of our path to enlightenment -- the cyber-rave, a virtual
seance, and the meme gateway. These loci of belief will show you that
we are neither to be feared nor hated. Indeed, we are to be praised,
for we make sense of a senseless world.'
As he made his pronouncements, we moved towards an imposing set of
double doors which muffled a crazed and rapid miasma of hectic rhythms.
The guru ordered the portals of the Raving Room to be thrown back,
revealing a cauldron of swirling black dervishes, swathed in a
mind-numbing cacophony. As my senses reeled, I saw that each dancer was
clad in a thick rubber suit, attached by cables to a complicated series
of ducts and flues in the ceiling. Each raver also wore a silvery
motorcycle helmet with an antenna rising from its top. The heat was
intense, the lights stroboscopic, and the smell of rubber
overpowering.
'Your senses have grepped the outer shell of reality. These young
bodies are dancing to the musical arrangements which you hear, but
their minds have ventured forth upon an unimaginable netrip. The rubber
suits fully confine their physical manifestations and monitor their
bodily processes. This information is ISDN'd to the matrix and used by
the cyber-gururettes, and ultimately The Ambient One, to regulate the
virtual environment fed to them through the meme helmet. In this way,
their minds are purged and expanded in a controlled form, for the
matrix is a wild and often villainous place.'
I asked him to elucidate upon the matrix.
'The matrix is often equated with the paltry Usenet, and in a frail
sense they are similar, but cyber-spiritualism transcends such
parameters. Strictly speaking the matrix is the home of the ethereal
corporality. The sum of all that was, is, and shall be. The
tautological truth of this proposition is at the foundation of our
creed.' He saluted the air as he concluded this statement.
I was still a little uncertain about what the meme helmet picked up: a
religious station at the far reaches of the FM dial, a particularly
active police band, or something from the Usenet? He snorted: 'You have
an amusing turn of phrase which reveals your empathy with our vision.
The meme helmet is a comunitek inspired receiver, a receptacle of
filtered and enhanced virtuality, but still only a shadow of the truth,
for that is all that neophytes can bear.'
My attention wandered back to the dance floor, and I saw one such
exhausted neophyte being unhooked from his tubing by two soothsayers.
He was dragged to a table where a steaming drink was placed in front of
him, along with a slip of paper. I pointed this scene out to Pungent,
and he deconstructed its meaning.
'The neophyte has supped from the cyberspace of knowledge and is sated.
Now he is rewarded with a nootropic SmartDrink of my own creation. It
is a patented mixture of dried herbs from Ceylon, heated spring water
and a dash of lactose. The paper is a bill for the rental of the meme
helmet for the dance duration, and for the drink. But enough of these
lowly newbies, they do not befit my prolonged attention. Let us visit
the virtual seance.'
We strode from the dance hall, climbed a staircase to another dimly lit
corridor, and entered a room marked 'Seance (Virtual)'. Along its
sides, spaced at regular intervals, were a series of Victorian bathtubs
replete with fine iron tracery and enamelled taps. However, my
attention was inevitably drawn towards the individuals in the tubs, who
were submerged in either yellow or black viscous liquids. Fortunately,
the heads of the bathers were visible, and clad in meme helmets. In
addition, each wore a pair of WWII-style flying goggles, connected to
the ceiling by wiring.
The guru spoke: 'The individuals that you are privileged to behold are
senior soothsayers -- men and women who have at last taken full control
of their bodily functions. This allows them to transcend the musical
penury of the cyber-rave and to enter the next stage of their training.
Of course,' he laughed, 'they are still unable to converse with The
Ambient One, but they are ready to hear his words and view his
visions.'
I surmised that the goggles were transmitting pictures, and the helmet
a related sound track. But what about the bathtubs?
'You overstep your intellectual abilities, my child.' he said in a
lightly scolding voice. 'The meme helmet and meme mirrorshades do not,
nor never will, relay an understandable narrative. For why should the
matrix perpetuate a fallacy? The world is a discordant concordance of
sounds and images, and that must be reflected in the seance. Naturally,
there are themes and agendas contained within the seance, but their
form is chosen by the cyber-gururettes and The Ambient One. As for the
bathtubs, they hold substances whose specific gravities are great
enough to support the soothsayer during his encounter with the matrix.
After extensive personal research, I have sanctioned the use of custard
and chocolate sauce.'
He continued in a different vein: 'Time is short, the solstice
approaches. I have spoken of the meme gateway, and so you shall see it.
Come.'
His pace was more urgent now, and we hurried through more shadowy
passages, up and down narrow stairwells, until I was quite lost.
Abruptly, the guru stopped before a nondescript door and knocked out a
code -- it sounded like the first few bars of the 'Star Trek' theme
tune. The door was opened by a young man wearing a 'Star Trek' outfit
(old generation), and I couldn't fail to notice that everyone inside
was similarly dressed.
Pungent explained: 'The meme gateway is staffed by my royal
cyber-gururettes. They have been through a rigorous didactic regime, of
which the rave and seance are two insignificant stages. They have
attained a mental melding with the matrix and The Ambient One of
almost', he stressed 'almost' with a karate chopping motion with his
left hand, 'almost the same vigour as my own.'
He moved over to one of the 5 PCs which adorned the poorly ventilated
room. One of the gururettes was sat in front of it, scanning through
the messages in two Usenet news groups (alt.tasteless and
rec.food.cooking.uk, as I recall) and also looking at a series of gifs
displayed in rapid succession in another window (the topic was caring
Californian babes in bikinis I believe). Occasionally, he would press
the return or escape keys and a line from a news item, or a fragment of
a gif, would be highlighted and then disappear from the screen. After
doing this about 10 times, the gururette took a swig from a half empty
bottle on the desk beside him. Again I asked the guru to reveal the
significance of the scene.
'We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of the dreams. The
gururettes are perusing one of the earthly projections of the matrix
for proclamations by The Ambient One. These, like all eternal truths,
are esoteric and veiled from casual eyes. However, the gururettes have
been taught to see through the barrage of irrelevancies that shroud our
lives, and to alight instinctively on The Ambient One's words and
images. These are pulled from the matrix, assembled by the High
Priestess, and piped to the meme helmets and mirrorshades throughout
the building.'
I queried the presence of the bottles.
'Why are you so blinkered, feeble minded nonbeliever? Our name reveals
all -- the bottles contain the gururette's elixirs: gin, whiskey,
vodka, bourbon. All spirits in the service of our mission.'
A red phone began ringing and, with a mild look of alarm, the guru
hastened to answer it. After a few hushed words, he returned to my
side.
'Your interface with our sanctum sanctorum has not gone unnoticed. The
High Priestess has just returned from a visit to the matrix to commune
with The Ambient One, and she has sensed your presence. She has decided
to see you, so that you may learn more of the verities of our calling.
Perhaps you may even see the Symbols of The Ambient One?'
This last sentence was uttered in a subdued and reverential tone, as he
guided me from the meme gateway. This time we headed in a heavenly
direction for an inordinately long time, but I began to sense that we
were approaching our destination as Pungent's breath became laboured.
In fact, so did mine, as a peculiar aroma filled the air. I can only
describe it as a mix between the smell of a less then fastidious public
house just before closing time, and a rather ripe sack of dirty
laundry. The stairs came to an end and Pungent led me into a candle-lit
chamber. The public house aroma came from the thousands of
empty beer bottles stacked around us, some dragooned into service as
candle holders. The sack of dirty laundry odour emanated from
the High Priestess herself, who closely resembled the smell she
emitted.
The guru began to speak: 'Lowly journalistic life form, behold and
stand in awe of the High Priestess...'
The Priestess interrupted him: 'No need for formality dear. Just call
me Granny Love. Have you got a bottle opener?'
The guru leapt forward, producing one from the folds of his kaftan. He
seemed worried about something, and spoke to Granny Love in a hasty
whisper. She ignored him and looked at me.
'You're interested in the Symbols of The Ambient One are you dear? It
distresses me to show his failures to the outside world, even though he
was just poor old Ambient Love, my first-born, when it happened.'
She turned and pulled back a small curtain, revealing a burnt piece of
plastic supported in a framework of discarded bottles. The plastic had
been in a heavy fire but on the front I could just read the letters
"Z", "X", "8" and "1". Like a thunder bolt, I realised that the melted
blob was the case of a ZX-81, a ground breaking personal computer of
the early 1980's, designed and sold by the English super-entrepreneur
Sir Clive Sinclair.
'I can see from your face, dear, that you've recognised the origins of
our shrine. Ambient was a fanatical home computer boffin way back when.
Even after Stella, his wife, left him and poor little Pungent, he still
wouldn't give up his ZX-81.'
I stuttered out a question about The Ambient One's current location.
'It's strange you should say "current" dear. When his mind-expansion
experiment went wrong, Ambient's empyreal existence was separated from
its physical embodiment. If only he'd checked his BASIC coding and
realised he was sending 200,000 volts through his cranium and not 0.2
volts. I thought he was dead, I really did, until I entered my trance
state with the aid of these.' She gestured towards a few of the
bottles. 'He appeared before me then, and explained about now being The
Ambient One, being part of the matrix, and telling me to found the
church. He even dictated some rules and regulations, but I lost those
the next day, and he was too upset to tell me again. Very moody he is
sometimes, just like Puggy-woogy.' She ruffled the guru's dreadlocks.
I asked if I could speak to The Ambient One using her approach.
'Sorry dear, no-can-do. You have to do the training first, and then
there's still no guarantee. Absolutely no money-back guarantee.'
Money?
'$20,000 for the full course, $15,000 if you supply your own spirits.
Very reasonable I'd say in such a fractured and chaotic world.'
----------------------L - i - N - E ----- N - o - i - Z ----------------------
File - #
From: ah804@freenet.carleton.ca (Kipp Lightburn)
Square One - Pt.6
-----------------
For a brief second I can feel the sky.
And then we fall.
I twist my weight and push her above me, then brace myself for the
impact of the fall. I crane my head back to see where we're dropping to.
One of them. Directly beneath us standing next to an armored van, and
talking into a radio. Unaware. I don't fight the urge to grin.
Collision occurs as cold metal body armor touches the skin on my
back. He squeals as his body betrays him. I hear and feel his spine
crumble in several places. Then the three of us become intimate with the
ground. His armor absorbs most of the fall, and my brace falls to the
concrete with a metallic crackle.
"Are you okay?"
She looks at me dazed and doesn't answer. I sit up slowly and
roll her off of me gently. My eyes scan her body for damage, for blood.
"I'm alright." She mutters still clutching Goldies computer.
I wobble to my feet, scraping up the gun from the one who broke
our fall. Blood leaks through the cracks in his armor and spills out onto
the street, mingling with the yellow dotted line.
"DOWN THERE!! OPEN FIRE!!" Screams the window we jumped from.
At least a dozen of them crowd the windows and begin to spray bullets. I
grab her again and throw her into the van, diving in after her. The
bullets, aided by gravity, smash into the vans armor.
I slide upright in the drivers seat. The engine is still running
so I slam the car into drive and feed it gas.
When I see her body relax she starts to talk,"I thought we'd lost
you back at the hospital."
"What happened? I blacked out just before those two guys got me to
the van." I maneuvre down streets that I have never seen.
"Well Spiro handed you over to Ash so that he could come and help me
out. Then this car screeches up from around the corner and two guys get out
shooting at Ash. So spiro and I are shooting at both the hospital and at
these new guys. They nailed Ash then grabbed you. Spiro managed to kill
one of them though. Then you and this guy take off in the car. So Spiro
and I jumped into the nearest car we could find and got out of there."
Information. I need it almost as much as I need my memories.
Almost as much as I need her.
I look at her, "I can't remember anything Stick."
"I could have guessed."
"Why was I in the hospital, and who were the armored guards?"
I watch the road and feel her watching me, "You just dissappeared
Kyle. One day you just up and disappeared on us. We were organizing a
counterstrike against the Dreamhaven Communications Corporation, and you
were our key tough guy. Spiro figured Dreamhaven caught wind of something
and then nabbed you."
"Why me?"
She shrugs and turns to watch the road.
"What else?" I urge her to keep going.
"Well then one day, months later, one of our insiders calls up
Spiro and says she's just seen you at the Alexander Babbitch Hospital, and
Dreamhaven had called in their SecuriCops to keep you from getting away.
Well he grabbed me and Ash and we got our asses over there." She sighs,
"And you know the rest from there."
She turns to me expectantly and shuffles her weight around in the
seat.
It's my turn,"They performed alot of tests on me. Jabbed me with
alot of needles and stuff. Mostly though, they just watched me. They sat
and observed." Images of them prodding me and staring sit fresh in my
newborn memory. Inquisitive faces. I start to remember the way they made
me feel. The need to escape. To run. They couldn't run faster, they
couldn't run faster than me.
"Hey, you okay?" Stick leans toward me.
I nod carefully, "Goldie said there was a change in my DNA. His
computer picked up on it. Any idea what that means?"
She pulls Goldie's computer into view, "Not a clue, they didn't
mention anything to me about it."
"I want to know." I need more than what I've got, I need it all.
She pulls a tiny computer out of a pocket in her dress and pushes
a few buttons. I stare at the road as it flies past us. My mind wanders
through this new knowledge with renewed focus.
"Well I know someone who could tell us whats on Goldies computer.
Pull over, I'll drive us there." She tucks the tiny console back into her
pocket.
And for the first time that I can remember, I trust. I trust her.
And the car finds its way to the side of the road...
--
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|/ | [ email at ] -------------
|\IPP |_IGHTBURN [ ah804@freenet.carleton.ca ] -------------
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File - $
From: C.McLean-Campbell <cmc@cs.strath.ac.uk>
HEAVY DUTY
C.McLean-Campbell
Series Editor: Peaches
Copyright 1994 Toaster Books. All Rights Reserved.
CHAPTER TWO.
Saturday, 25th January, 2014.
"The news headlines at eight o'clock. Rescue teams have continued to work
throughout the night following the massive landslips that devastated southern Italy
yesterday. American scientists confirmed today that the volcanic dust from the series
of volcanic eruptions of 2005 continues to effect global weather systems."
Even before the V.R. switched on, Cameron Pride knew he had been
poisoned with Laninane. Movement had returned to his eyes and visual cortex
an hour earlier. Paralysed, he'd watched the vacuum cleaner struggling with
the broken glass on the floor. The little house robot had carefully worked
it's way around him and Lin Yin. It was a coincidence that the VR had come
on just as the effect of the drug had snapped off. He could see both the
real time and the perceived time in the bottom left hand corner of the
virtuality, as Dave reached out a hand to greet him.
"Cameron San, zdrastvooytye. Coffee?" said Dave, indicating the cream
coloured seat next to him in the studio. Pride cringed; he could hear the
audience behind him. It was a strain not to sit down and he didn't want to
look around. He'd met Drooszhbah in real life, Lainey knew him but Lainey
knew everyone.
Dave Drooszbah's show was traditional style People-TV, with the
audience seated on mobile grandstands. He felt embarrassed immediately. His
face was flushed and he could feel his collar tightening around his throat.
There was a pain in his temple that felt as though someone was sticking a
roofing spike into a hole in his skull. At the back of his neck, where his
spinal chord inserted into his brain, he could feel two throbbing golf
balls that he needed to hold. Mind pictures of sparkling water and codeine
tablets drifted past.
"Aw God," he moaned, and felt his throat burn as he spoke. That was a
real sensation, he thought, not a virtual one.
Dave was watching him like an eager puppy. The mediastar visibly flinched.
"Problemo?" asked Dave,leaning forward in his seat. The audience
hushed expectantly. Pride was tempted to drink from the glass bottle of
water on the table in front of Drooszhbah, but he'd tried to relieve a
hangover in the virtuality before: it just made it worse.
Sometimes you had to force yourself to remember that it was all
pretend. Otherwise you would become mesmerised by the VR and end up like
the millions of couch-potatoes out there in the nothing. Sad pedestrians
who spent most of their lives in the virtuality, permanently tuned into the
alternative lives that beamed down from the satellites. They were pale
haunted people who only occasionally ventured out to work, eat and sleep.
Things had no taste in the virtuality. If Pride drank from the
bottle, he would feel the water trickling down his throat and his kidneys
would behave as if they were rehydrated. But not for long, perhaps thirty
seconds at the most. Just long enough to thicken his blood and crank up the
decibels on his headache. He left the bottle alone and automatically placed
a hand against the chair to steady himself.
" Shit, Dave!" said Pride, his throat burning more. "Who set this
fucking thing to participant?"
Dave flashed a grin at the studio audience to release the tension;
they applauded and laughed. Dave egged them on with his hand as he rose
from his seat to put a hand on Pride's arm. With the other hand he pointed
straight at an attractive young blonde woman in the audience and raised one
eyebrow. "Was it you?" he said to her. "It was you, wasn't it? a' Va?"
The woman flushed red and covered her face with her hands. Dave's show was
like that. She was giggling, but squirming with embarrassment. A long time
ago Pride might have screwed her, despite feeling so ill. But that was a
million years ago. The thought of safe sex made him laugh out loud, to the
obvious bewilderment of some of the audience. Whatever he was now, he would
never be a pedestrian ever again. He was definite about that; he knew what
was real and he knew what was pretend.
The woman whimpered and glanced wilfully at him with her dewy eyes.
The shades must be set to hypothalamus scanning: she was obviously a
profile job, set to match his sexual desires.
Drooszhbah looked back at Pride, a shock of white hair spilling over
his thick eyebrows, and a grin splitting his face like the doors on a
Skyhook hangar.
" Cameron San, don't get upset. Come over to this menu bar," he said,
leading Pride by the arm to where the menu bar floated in the virtuality.
Without thinking, and too sick to concentrate properly, Pride started to
reach out for the 'non-participant' option on the menu bar. Before Pride
could stop himself touching it, Dave had already prepared the audience with
a hand gesture. As soon as Pride touched it, they would shout the show's
big catch-phrase.
In virtuality his right hand was reaching toward the menu bar, but
the sensation jarred violently with the 'out to lunch' messages of his
nervous system, struggling to rouse a limb that had been underneath his
deadweight for eleven hours. His virtual arm started to flicker and blink.
'Accidentals', random signals created by the backwash of neural activity
from the pins and needles in his real arm, appeared around his virtual arm
as tiny purple balls, green cubes, and pyramids with rainbow coloured
stripes flickering across them. The synthesizers were having difficulty
interpreting the feedback. Wasn't there an attachment you could get to do
that deliberately? What was it called? FuzzBox? HowlAround? He couldn't
remember. Pride could see Dave out of the corner of his eye, dancing
around and winding up 'The Drooszies'.
"GET BACK IN THE AUDIENCE SUCKER!" they cried.
Pride managed to yank his shades off with his left hand before he had
to experience any more of Dave's show. He pulled too hard and the shades
leapt to the floor with such force that they bounced out of sight under the
edge of one of the black leather armchairs. He lay on the floor of Lainey's
apartment exactly where he'd fallen. His abdominal muscles screamed in
complaint as he twisted slightly, and little points of light sparkled
across his left eye. Changes in his blood pressure didn't affect his right
eye. It was artificial; cybernetic. A clinical shunt in the artificial
socket adjusted the pressure and eliminated the effects of pressure changes
on the optic nerve.
The Indiana Skyhook Disaster of zero seven was the incident where he
lost his right eye. Not just his eye. If he had just lost his right eye, he
wouldn't have minded. It was one of the early commercial operations of sub-
orbital passenger transport. A space plane that effectively halved journey
time by flying straight into near orbit and back down again. He thought
about that crash every day. Every single day. But he never talked about it,
not any more. Too many blubber-faced dumbfucks in bars would waver sad-eyed
over bourbon glasses and ask if he had been a passenger.
Passenger!
There were no survivors when the Skyhook re-entered the atmosphere
that day. Not one. Not one fragment of flesh or bone was found of the 847
passengers and crew that Friday morning in November when the superjet fell
out of the sky. Mortally ruptured at extreme altitude, it ripped into a
million pieces of white hot screaming metal that rained down on Indiana.
The navigation system, infected with the Black Friday Virus, had calculated
the re-entry window at 120 klicks south of its proper position. As the
Federal Aviation Authority Commission of Inquiry concluded, even an error
of 68 klicks would been sufficient to down the flight.
The highway patrol on route 21 found Tim's car early that morning. At
least they found what was left of it. Sarah's parents had called them the
previous evening to let them know they had managed to get a seat on the
Skyhook, and changed the arrangements to meet them in Indiana. She was
excited. She hadn't seen her folks face to face for almost eighteen months.
They scrounged a lift from Tim Han. Tim was always cracking jokes at
Lainey's expense. It was an occupational hazard for the head of department.
Tim was a funny guy, a natural performer imitating Lainey's obsession with
detail. She thought Tim was hysterical. She laughed so hard at his antics
that she had to beg him to stop.
Sometimes the memory of her was so strong he could almost reach out
and touch the green short sleeved Medicine Sans Frontires fatigues that
left her china-like arms visible and outlined her breasts. She'd spent
three years on the malaria vaccine program and had performed thousands of
vaccinations, yet Pride still had to hold her hand when she had her own
shots because she would inevitably faint. His memories of her were clear,
vivid and precise, down to the most painful of details. The way her thin
lips would crease at the corners as they spread into a warm smile. The way
her blue eyes sparkled when they caught the light. He was looking directly
at her when she died.
He remembered that too.
No one that he could remember actually sat down with him and told him
what had happened. Skyhook was a big disaster, perhaps they had missed him
out. The tabloid news shows were keen on the "Scientist in Triple Tragedy"
story. That was his fifteen minutes of fame. He re-assembled what had
happened that day from watching one-eyed as Drooszhbah dissected the
disaster on his talk show news.
When the jet struck the atmosphere it lit up half of Indiana. He
couldn't remember the over flash at all. He was out of the car, pissing
beside a bush and smiling at Sarah. Tim was sitting on the back bumper
smoking a cigarette. That was it. Sometimes he wondered if he really was
out of the car, if he really was doing a piss. It was a missing section,
like a drop-out on a tape, that memory must have vanished with the bits of
brain tissue that blew out of his eye socket.
White heat.
Pure, clean, white, sharp, blistering, heat.
That was all he could remember after Sarah's smile. White fucking
heat and molten spray down his face. He wandered half a klick down the
highway, caked in blood and brain tissue. The patrolman found him with a
hole in his head big enough to shove a golf ball into. "Jesus! Sir....just
stay still a second buddy, your gonna be OK."
The inquiry concluded that two pieces of the jet had struck them,
although the area around the car was pockmarked with other strikes. The
first, larger piece had struck the car, vaporised Sarah and blasted Tim,
brain dead, across the desert. The second piece, probably less than a gram,
smashed against the outer edge of Pride's right eye as he looked up. It
struck with enough terminal velocity to shatter his cheekbone and blow the
socket out like it had been kissed by a chainsaw. For weeks he spent nights
awake soaked in sweat, deliberately letting the pain from his face creep
across his skull like a steel claw scratching into the bone. He used it
like a drug, drowning himself in pain to drive away his grief.
The laninane spasm had made his guts feel as if he'd been booted up
and down the apartment. He could see Lainey and Lin Yin's picture on the
wall above the bar beside the expensive music centre he was always boasting
about.
It was always a bad idea to lose your V.R. shades if you weren't in
the same axis of orientation as the virtuality when you cut it off. At the
very least it just made you seasick. At its worst it would make you barf.
Pride started to retch, but only a tiny drop of green bile came up and he
spat it out, screwing up his face at the bitter taste. The retch stabbed at
his abductors, pulling his arms into his side like a foetus in one of those
scope shots. Moaning, he raised his head up a little as another wave of
nausea heaved up from his stomach. He dry-retched again. Pride couldn't
puke anything now because he had puked eleven hours ago and he was still
lying in it.
Lin Yin was slumped motionless on the floor next to him. Her short
tartan skirt completely failed to cover her black panties and one of her
spiked heels had dug into the blue carpet lifting the pile up. The
precisely cut blue black fringe of hair had fallen across her eyes. It
still looked immaculate, even in morbidity. He put one of his hands up to
his chest and held himself. He tried to speak, to say her name, but his
voice was a dry croak. He reached out and tried to pull her skirt over her
panties but it was too short. He wanted her to have dignity, he needed to
protect her memory in some way. He'd seen people die before, but having to
witness this, the death of friends, he didn't need it. He closed his eyes
for a second. Who to pray to? Ultimately, everyone was nothing more than a
bag of rags. The same dreadful realisation struck him every time he was
involved in death: that there was nothing out there; that we are alone.
Tears spilled out over his eyes and splashed amongst the puke.
But where was Lainey? Pride looked all around him for the tall man's
body and pushed his own horror to the back of his mind.
The place stank of decomposing fish and cabbage. Lin Yin's empty
glass was still grasped in her hand. Lainey's glass was nearby and Pride
found his on the floor where he'd fallen.
At the edge of the armchair, Pride spotted a single black shoe. A
man's shoe. Lainey's shoe.
He picked it up. The laces were still tied in a neat double bow. He
carefully returned it to where he had found it. One of them had struck the
tiny glass coffee table on the way down and the floor was covered in
thousands of shattered glass fragments mixed in with the borscht and sushi
that had been part of Pride's evening meal: Japanese and Russian food to
celebrate the second day of Chinese New Year. It could only happen in
Hacinohe II. Lin Yin always missed her folks at New Year and they always
took her over to Southside during the celebrations.
It was common knowledge on the street that if you mixed Laninane, a
controlled CNS depressant, with the hallucinogen 'Rapture' you would throw
up violently and black out for ten hours. Simple as that. He could never
remember the precise biochemistry of the reaction, but it wasn't nice. Well
except for one thing. The reaction happened with such speed and violence,
that if you had taken 'Rapture' then it was quite impossible to poison
yourself with Laninane. Laninane was a very popular overdose, a colourless
liquid developed by Agritechno for NASA's Mars mission, but later used for
Skyhook passengers who suffered from space sickness. A minute amount of it
made you feel calm and was completely free from side effects. Unfortunately
a larger amount made you feel even calmer for the fifteen minutes before
your heart simply stopped beating. The FDA had withdrawn Laninane's license
in zero eight after a protracted and often bitter court case.
'Rapture' was an illegal street drug with a name that was the best
adjective to describe how you felt on it. It was like reality travelling at
mach 2. Seven minutes after a small paper stamp of it dissolved on the
tongue the world looked as if God had adjusted the high-res. Everything
suddenly had the sparkle of fairy dust about it. The sort of drug that made
watching paint dry a profound spiritual experience. Of course, it wasn't
proscribed for nothing and coming down was a bad trip. You felt like shit
the next morning. But Pride didn't care about that, he was on a permanent
bad trip anyway. The bit he needed back inside couldn't be scraped up off
Highway 21.
He wasn't sparkling now, that was certain. Right now he wanted to get
out of the place before anyone turned up. He struggled to stand upright and
the room swung around. His hands were covered in vomit and broken glass.
Sick and dazed, he almost wiped his hand across his face. "Shit!" he said,
and quickly glanced at his reflection in the big mirror behind the bar. His
face was unmarked, apart from the rain streaked brown hair. Bron had paid a
fortune for that roman nose and the chin lipo in New York. And Pride's
medical insurance had lapsed two weeks ago too.
His head was swimming but he concentrated, trying to make sense of
his predicament. He could remember coming over to the Chapter Kings
apartment the night before. Lainey was engrossed in a phone conversation
when Lin Yin showed him in. Lainey gave him a wave of recognition and made
a face at the phone.
Pride waited with Lin Yin until Lainey finished with the phone call.
Lin Yin poured them all a drink. They toasted the New Year.
Pride was almost instantly sick, but the significance didn't
immediately strike them. They both knew what Pride was like, and Lin Yin
had helped Lainey to put him to bed more than once.
But then it dawned on her. The way the reaction occurred so fast that
he didn't have time to react or move, he just heaved as he stood. It was
unnatural and she knew it. She looked at her glass and then looked at him,
horrified, unable to speak. He could still remember that look of horror on
her face as she turned to Lainey. Then Lainey had dropped his own glass and
Pride had blacked out at that point.
So where was Lainey now?
He shook his head and then shivered, suddenly feeling cold. His
mouth felt as if it was full of dry cotton wool. He desperately needed a
drink of water. Was everything in the bar poisoned? He could see an
unopened bottle of Puritan water amongst the bottles on the bar. Crunching
through the glass on the thick pink pile carpet, he reached over and peeled
off the tamper-proof seal. The security chip chimed out a cheerful little
jingle, confirming it was safe. He drank it down. Puritan Foods, he thought
with relief, where would anyone be without them?
Pride searched the entire apartment but found nothing. Lainey's
telephone still lay on the desk near the entertainments centre. If he had
gone, why had he left that? How would he pay for anything?
Lainey's apartment was forty two floors up in the heart of New
Hachinohe II. Outside in the rain, the city was still working. At any hour,
in any weather, Hachinohe always looked the same. Rain or shine, night or
day, it pulsed business. It flashed on and off and it roared up and down
past the moving sidewalk where the hookers, pimps and night creatures
hustled.
He had to get out of there. If Unipol made any connection with him
and this mess, never mind the drugs, his authorisation codes would be
cancelled and he'd be suspended from the register of systems engineers. He
would be wasted. He'd never work again. Without authorisation codes he
couldn't wander around the network the way he had for the past eighteen
months, hunting Black Friday. He had to stay on the register. He had to
stay in the game.
He stumbled towards the door and reached for his drysuit on the peg.
He had to stop and lean against the wall for a moment, his head still
throbbing from the 'Rapture' toxins. He didn't need to shake the drysuit.
Lin Yin must have rinsed it for him before she hung it up. He heard the
wail of a Unipol siren coming from the street below and froze, seized by
panic that surged up from his guts. He told the hall monitor to switch on.
The Unipol unit was right outside, and two figures in the distinct black
overalls and riot helmets were already climbing out of the big Inkoma All
Terrain Vehicle. He was cut off. He pulled on the waterproofs and leaned,
gasping against the door.
So now what, he asked himself?
He watched the monitor. There were only two of them and they didn't
seem in a hurry. He still had time. He just had to find a way out. He
glanced around the apartment and saw his shades lying beside Lin Yin. He
quickly picked them up. The fire escape was the only option. He killed the
power to the shades and put them back on, he couldn't afford to damage the
one good eye with U.V. exposure. Pulling up the hood and the face mask, he
struggled with the window seals and hauled himself out onto the rain soaked
fire escape. He almost stepped off the edge of the building. Somewhere down
below, out of sight, firecrackers were spitting on the sidewalk and the
chimes of a dragon procession were cracking open the morning.
Lainey's fire escape terminated at his window. The part above him was
still intact but the lower section had fallen away, corroded by the
interminable action of the acid rain. Pride could see the rusting scrap way
below in the overgrown yard beside the stables. Across the way, about two
metres, was the fire escape for the next block.
" Shit!", he said and for a second wondered if he should put his
gloves on or keep them off. Opposite, and two floors down, he could see
that the wall brackets on that fire escape had worked loose too.
He stood up straight and took three slow deep breaths,
" I know I can do this. I might as well get on with it" he said out
loud. He took three rapid breaths to hyperventilate and before he could
dwell on it any further, he climbed up on the rail, balanced there for a
second and then threw himself across the gap.
Too hard.
He slammed violently against the rail. The entire structure groaned
with the impact and his hands flailed in a moment of panic. His right knee
caught on the ledge while his left leg dangled over into oblivion. His
system flushed so brutally with adrenalin that he gasped with fear and
almost gagged as his hand grasped the rail and fought to hold on. He
quickly stifled the need to puke in the face mask. For a second he stayed
perfectly still and slowly opened his eyes. Then he quickly climbed over
the rail and down the escape.
The cloud broke and the rain stopped but he kept the mask secured
until he'd gone two blocks south. Half a block further, he stepped out of
the back alleys into the main street. A Dragon procession trailed past and
he almost walked into the dark overalls of a fully armed Unipol Street
Unit, policing the event. His heart skipped a beat as he caught the sharp
tang of ionisation from the laser sights. Pride casually sidestepped the
unit onto the jig-lane and an old chinaman, wearing traditional robes and
carrying an incense stick as tall as himself, almost knocked him over.
One of the Unipol glanced round at the noise. Pride caught the
movement out of the corner of his eye. The last thing he needed right now
was for some fucking grunt to ID him in the neighbourhood. He bowed deeply
at the old man, conscious that he was unsure about how much difference
there was between Chinese and Japanese manners. The old man bowed back and
smiled, crinkling his weathered skin. "It's OK son. My fault entirely," he
said before disappearing into the crowd. The grunt had moved on.
Loitering beneath the canopy of Yardies Deli opposite him, two long-
legged Sino's in see-through capes, short skirts and dark stockings watched
the procession, smiling through hi-tone lip gloss and green eye make-up.
The tallest of the two was wearing a Queer Nation T-shirt. She stopped
chewing her gum, blew Pride a kiss and winked.
Mixed race boys in Hacinohe grouped themselves into transvestite
collectives, gangs called Taighs or Houses, ruthlessly territorial. They
regarded the community as theirs and they jealously protected the Chapters
or districts from external invasions of the street level crime that they
inevitably controlled. These two boy-girls wore the golden silk wrist
streamers of Taigh nan Fendi, The House of Fendi.
To the Houses, everyone else was either a pedestrian, the straight
population restricted to working the legal maximum of three days per week,
or a machine person, anyone who worked in the communications industry,
especially analysts and engineers who enjoyed the privilege of unrestricted
employment. Pride bowed respectfully to them, the way a local would,
clasping his hands together in the Taoist form.
He walked another two blocks through the crowd and turned the corner
at the neighbourhood reactor before breaking into a run. He had to get to
Parcho, the Russian's place. He would know what to do.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= L - I = N - e =-=-= N - o = i - Z =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
File - %
From: joshua@server.dmccorp.com (Joshua Lellis)
CHIBA CITY BLUES
By Joshua Lellis
Ok, few opening remarks...
Some of you may not know my writings, or only barely know me from my
interview with Taran King in Line Noiz 19... Well, let me first tell you the
motives I have behind Chiba City Blues, and the articles that will be
appearing in future Line Noiz issues...
Chiba City Blues, of course, comes from Gibson's _Neuromancer_, it's the
title of Part One. Every good cpunk writer knows that. And that's what CCB
will be about...
Every so often in Line Noiz you'll see an article about CCB... CCB is
the sub-zine of Line Noiz based purely on creative cyberpunk science fiction.
That means reviews of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo fiction, a.c.c.d discussions
(technical cpunk in the future, smart drugs, the matrix), and so on. Every
now and then we're going to pick out an acc writer to interview and ask a few
questions.
So, why did we create CCB? I, myself, did not feel that any zine out
there today really centralized on the creative part of cyberpunk. Line Noiz
is as close as they get. So CCB will appear in Line Noiz until there is
either: a) a need for a seperate CCB zine,
b) no need for CCB, no one wants to read it,
c) the popularity and readership of acc goes up.
Sure, you're thinking, hey, this is one big publicity stunt for a.c.c
that's been stuck into my LN zine. One big advertisement. Welp, we're going
to try not to do that. We're going to try our best to bring you the world of
cpunk as it is seen in the eyes of the most realistic and best cpunk writers
out there today, the amateurs.
They do not get paid for anything they do for a.c.c. They write entire
novels, full length novels, 300k+ novels. They give feedback; take feedback.
They take the critques and the I hate your work letters and try harder. They
do not give up.
Anyone in their right mind would not write for a.c.c. No one would. The
dangers are incredible.
There are no standard copyright claims, sure, you own anything you put
out there, but it's not really yours. You make it public domain, but it's
yours.
People flame you. There is always the ego-boy that gets a rush out of
telling someone else they suck.
But there are the advantages:
-- you grow as a writer. People give feedback. There are people in acc
that read your novels. They talk about your novels. They enjoy your
novels, or they hate your novels. Either way, you learn to take the
critics on head first, and strive to come out ahead every time.
-- you are informed. You become aware of the surrondings. You begin to
wonder, to think. Hey, this stuff could happen to me in the future.
-- you get respect from others. If you can write, you can get respect.
Some may take longer than others, but that is not a big deal. You
get respect, and when you've earned that respect, you can dish
out respect to others.
-- the world is yours to play around with. It doesn't matter what you do
during the day. Cpunk writing is a night job. Plain and simple. Reading
cpunk is a night job, too. And you can do whatever you see fit in
this world that you created, that you helped create, that you helped
continue to create.
-- you don't have to say anything. ACC is created to work as a two way
street. Someone writes something, you read it, you like it, you tell
them. But you don't have to. Nobody makes you do anything in ACC. You
can stay around for years, read novel after novel and nobody can tell
you not to. You can enjoy good science fiction for free.
-- you get published automatically. No "we hate you, die die die" form
letters. You write it, you get published. Very simple.
So that's why we've created CCB. We want to see ACC expand, and we want
to have people become interested in cpunk science fiction.
So is this a big advertisement for a.c.c? In a way, you could say that.
But if you like to read/write/or debate, a.c.c and CCB is the place for you.
I'd like to finish this column of CCB with a quote that was published in
a.c.c a little while ago.
>From uuneo.neosoft.com!news.uh.edu!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!psgrain!armon!jina!fredmail Thu Aug 25 16:08:05 1994
From: Jeff.Harris@f1013.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Jeff Harris)
Path: uuneo.neosoft.com!news.uh.edu!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!psgrain!armon!jina!fredmail
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: The Alaskan
Message-ID: <777767433.AA00559@jina.rain.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 15:11:30 -0800
X-FTN-To: Joshua Lellis
Lines: 12
Mr. Lellis,
Ever since I read the Prolouge to The Alaskan, "Harry's Vice", I've
believed that you are one of THE best cyberpunk-style writers. Few
writers/books/novels ever catch my attention....I usually think of myself as
having discerning tastes, and I refuse to stoop as low as to read the
lastest pulp novel by some over published writer. However, you are nothing
like that. Your book seems to be coming along perfectly, and if it ever
gets published, I plan to buy a few copies (and hopefully, have you sign
one...) I do hope you are able to publish the book, and I wish you the best
of luck on the long road ahead.
-------------
To get something published in CCB, write to:
joshua@server.dmccorp.com
We'll publish anything you want. Letters to the editor of CCB should be
sent to the same address. If you have a newsreader, alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo is
the newsgroup for amateur writers. Also see: rec.arts.comics.creative and
alt.comics.lnh for creative comic writings.
CCB:
Editors: Joshua Lellis
<joshua@server.dmccorp.com>
The Heretic
<motleym@vax.sonoma.edu>
Mike Acar (unofficial)
<macar@mcs.kent.edu>
_______________________
<your name here, write to me at joshua@server.dmccorp.com>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--<----<----<----<----L - I - N - e ----- N - o - i - Z ---->---->---->---->--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Scheduled 4 upcomming issues: <<
<< >>
>> Interview: Bill Leeb & Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly, Delerium and <<
<< Intermix etc >>
>> Sci-Fi : Continuation of Heavy Duty <<
>> Chiba City Blues : Proves it's worth >>
END LINE_NOIZ.20
--
+ Billy Biggs Ottawa, Canada | =itwouldbetheultimatetriumphofhumanreason=
+ ae687@Freenet.carleton.ca | =forthenwewouldknowthemindofGOD= S.Hawking
