a short
story by Bruce Bethke
Foreword (written in 1997)
In the early spring of
1980 I wrote a little story about a bunch of teenage hackers. From the
very first draft this story had a name, and lo, the name was–
And you can bet any body part you’d care to name that, had I had even
the slightest least inkling of a clue that I would still be answering
questions about this word nearly 18 years later, I would have
bloody well trademarked the damned thing!
Nonetheless, I didn’t, and as you’re probably aware, the c-word has
gone on to have a fascinating career all its own. At this late date
I am not trying to claim unwarranted credit or tarnish anyone else’s
glory. (Frankly, I’d much rather people were paying attention to what
I’m writing now –e.g., my Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel,
Headcrash,
Orbit Books, £5.99 in paperback.) But for those folks who are obsessed
with history, here, in tightly encapsulated form, is the story behind
the story.
The invention of the c-word was a conscious and deliberate act of
creation on my part. I wrote the story in the early spring of 1980,
and from the very first draft, it was titled “Cyberpunk.” In calling
it that, I was actively trying to invent a new term that grokked
the juxtaposition of punk attitudes and high technology. My reasons
for doing so were purely selfish and market-driven: I wanted to give
my story a snappy, one-word title that editors would remember.
Offhand, I’d say I succeeded.
How did I actually create the word? The way any new word comes into
being, I guess: through synthesis. I took a handful of roots –cyber,
techno, et al– mixed them up with a bunch of terms for socially misdirected
youth, and tried out the various combinations until one just plain sounded
right.
IMPORTANT POINT! I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk fiction!
That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, Neuromancer,
was the real defining work of “The Movement.” (At the time, Norman Spinrad
argued that the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics,
since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.)
Then again, Gibson shouldn’t get sole credit either. Pat Cadigan (“Pretty
Boy Crossover”), Rudy Rucker (Software), W.T. Quick (Dreams
of Flesh and Sand), Greg Bear (Blood Music), Walter Jon Williams
(Hardwired), Michael Swanwick (Vacuum Flowers)…the list
of early ’80s writers who made important contributions towards defining
the trope defies my ability to remember their names. Nor was it an immaculate
conception: John Brunner (Shockwave Rider), Anthony Burgess (A
Clockwork Orange), and perhaps even Alfred Bester (The Stars
My Destination) all were important antecedents of the thing that
became known as cyberpunk fiction.
Me? I’ve been told that my main contribution was inventing the stereotype
of the punk hacker with a mohawk. That, and I named the beast,
of course.
[Note: If you want to find out more about the etymology of
cyberpunk — and quite a few other things, too — take a look at Bruce’s
web page. Alternatively, why not just scroll down and read the story
itself?]
Cyberpunk
The snoozer went off at seven and I was out of
my sleepsack, powered up, and on-line in nanos. That’s as far as I got.
Soon’s I booted and got–
CRACKERS/BUDDYBOO/8ER
–on the tube I shut down fast. Damn! Rayno had been on line before
me, like always, and that message meant somebody else had gotten into
our Net– and that meant trouble by the busload! I couldn’t do anything
more on term, so I zipped into my jumper, combed my hair, and went downstairs.
Mom and Dad were at breakfast when I slid into the kitchen. “Good
Morning, Mikey!” said Mom with a smile. “You were up so late last night
I thought I wouldn’t see you before you caught your bus.”
“Had a tough program to crack,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “now you can sit down and have a decent breakfast.”
She turned around to pull some Sara Lees out of the microwave and plunk
them down on the table.
“If you’d do your schoolwork when you’re supposed to you wouldn’t
have to stay up all night,” growled Dad from behind his caffix and faxsheet.
I sloshed some juice in a glass and poured it down, stuffed a Sara Lee
into my mouth, and stood to go.
“What?” asked Mom. “That’s all the breakfast you’re going to have?”
“Haven’t got time,” I said. “I gotta get to school early to see if
the program checks.” Dad growled something more and Mom spoke to quiet
him, but I didn’t hear much ’cause I was out the door.
I caught the transys for school, just in case they were watching.
Two blocks down the line I got off and transferred going back the other
way, and a coupla transfers later I wound up whipping into Buddy’s All-Night
Burgers. Rayno was in our booth, glaring into his caffix. It was 7:55
and I’d beat Georgie and Lisa there.
“What’s on line?” I asked as I dropped into my seat, across from Rayno.
He just looked up at me through his eyebrows and I knew better than
to ask again.
At eight Lisa came in. Lisa is Rayno’s girl, or at least she hopes
she is. I can see why: Rayno’s seventeen–two years older than the rest
of us–he wears flash plastic and his hair in The Wedge (Dad blew a
chip when I said I wanted my hair cut like that) and he’s so cool he
won’t even touch her, even when she’s begging for it. She plunked down
in her seat next to Rayno and he didn’t blink.
Georgie still wasn’t there at 8:05. Rayno checked his watch again,
then finally looked up from his caffix. “The compiler’s been cracked,”
he said. Lisa and I both swore. We’d worked up our own little code to
keep our Net private. I mean, our Olders would just blow boards if
they ever found out what we were really up to. And now somebody’d
broken our code.
“Georgie’s old man?” I asked.
“Looks that way.” I swore again. Georgie and I started the Net by
linking our smartterms with some stuff we stored in his old man’s home
business system. Now my Dad wouldn’t know an opsys if he crashed on
one, but Georgie’s old man–he’s a greentooth. A tech-type. He’d
found one of ours once before and tried to take it apart to see what
it did. We’d just skinned out that time.
“Any idea how far in he got?” Lisa asked. Rayno looked through her,
at the front door. Georgie’d just come in.
“We’re gonna find out,” Rayno said.
Georgie was coming in smiling, but when he saw that look in Rayno’s
eyes he sat down next to me like the seat was booby-trapped.
“Good morning Georgie,” said Rayno, smiling like a shark.
“I didn’t glitch!” Georgie whined. “I didn’t tell him a thing!”
“Then how the Hell did he do it?”
“You know how he is, he’s weird! He likes puzzles!” Georgie looked
to me for backup. “That’s how come I was late. He was trying to weasel
me, but I didn’t tell him a thing! I think he only got it partway open.
He didn’t ask about the Net!”
Rayno actually sat back, pointed at us all, and smiled. “You kids
just don’t know how lucky you are. I was in the Net last night
and flagged somebody who didn’t know the secures was poking Georgie’s
compiler. I made some changes. By the time your old man figures them
out, well…”
I sighed relief. See what I mean about being cool? Rayno had us outlooped
all the time!
Rayno slammed his fist down on the table. “But Dammit Georgie,
you gotta keep a closer watch on him!”
Then Rayno smiled and bought us all drinks and pie all the way around.
Lisa had a cherry Coke, and Georgie and I had caffix just like Rayno.
God, that stuff tastes awful! The cups were cleared away, and Rayno
unzipped his jumper and reached inside.
“Now kids,” he said quietly, “it’s time for some serious fun.” He
whipped out his microterm. “School’s off!”
I still drop a bit when I see that microterm–Geez, it’s a beauty!
It’s a Zeilemann Nova 300, but we’ve spent so much time reworking it,
it’s practically custom from the motherboard up. Hi-baud, rammed, rammed,
ported, with the wafer display folds down to about the size of a vid
casette; I’d give an ear to have one like it. We’d used Georgie’s old
man’s chipburner to tuck some special tricks in ROM and there wasn’t
a system in CityNet it couldn’t talk to.
Rayno ordered up a smartcab and we piled out of Buddy’s. No more riding
the transys for us, we were going in style! We charged the smartcab
off to some law company and cruised all over Eastside.
Riding the boulevards got stale after awhile, so we rerouted to the
library. We do a lot of our fun at the library, ’cause nobody ever bothers
us there. Nobody ever goes there. We sent the smartcab, still
on the law company account, off to Westside. Getting past the guards
and the librarians was just a matter of flashing some ID and then we
zipped off into the stacks.
Now, you’ve got to ID away your life to get on the libsys terms–which
isn’t worth half a scare when your ID is all fudged like ours is–and
they watch real careful. But they move their terms around a lot, so
they’ve got ports on line all over the building. We found an unused
port, and me and Georgie kept watch while Rayno plugged in his microterm
and got on line.
“Get me into the Net,” he said, handing me the term. We don’t have
a stored opsys yet for Netting, so Rayno gives me the fast and tricky
jobs.
Through the dataphones I got us out of the libsys and into CityNet.
Now, Olders will never understand. They still think a computer has got
to be a brain in a single box. I can get the same results with opsys
stored in a hundred places, once I tie them together. Nearly every computer
has got a dataphone port, CityNet is a great linking system,
and Rayno’s microterm has the smarts to do the job clean and fast so
nobody flags on us. I pulled the compiler out of Georgie’s old man’s
computer and got into our Net. Then I handed the term back to Rayno.
“Well, let’s do some fun. Any requests?” Georgie wanted something
to get even with his old man, and I had a new routine cooking, but Lisa’s
eyes lit up ’cause Rayno handed the term to her, first.
“I wanna burn Lewis,” she said.
“Oh fritz!” Georgie complained. “You did that last week!”
“Well, he gave me another F on a theme.”
“I never get F’s. If you’d read books once in a–”
“Georgie,” Rayno said softly, “Lisa’s on line.” That settled that.
Lisa’s eyes were absolutely glowing.
Lisa got back into CityNet and charged a couple hundred overdue books
to Lewis’s libsys account. Then she ordered a complete fax sheet of
Encyclopedia Britannica printed out at his office. I got next turn.
Georgie and Lisa kept watch while I accessed. Rayno was looking over
my shoulder. “Something new this week?”
“Airline reservations. I was with my Dad two weeks ago when he set
up a business trip, and I flagged on maybe getting some fun. I scanned
the ticket clerk real careful and picked up the access code.”
“Okay, show me what you can do.”
Accessing was so easy that I just wiped a couple of reservations first,
to see if there were any bells and whistles.
None. No checks, no lockwords, no confirm codes. I erased a couple
dozen people without crashing down or locking up. “Geez,” I said, “There’s
no deep secures at all!”
“I been telling you. Olders are even dumber than they look. Georgie?
Lisa? C’mon over here and see what we’re running!”
Georgie was real curious and asked a lot of questions, but Lisa just
looked bored and snapped her gum and tried to stand closer to Rayno.
Then Rayno said, “Time to get off Sesame Street. Purge a flight.”
I did. It was simple as a save. I punched a few keys, entered, and
an entire plane disappeared from all the reservation files. Boy, they’d
be surprised when they showed up at the airport. I started purging down
the line, but Rayno interrupted.
“Maybe there’s no bells and whistles, but wipe out a whole block of
flights and it’ll stand out. Watch this.” He took the term from me and
cooked up a routine in RAM to do a global and wipe out every flight
that departed at an :07 for the next year. “Now that’s how you do these
things without waving a flag.”
“That’s sharp,” Georgie chipped in, to me. “Mike, you’re a genius!
Where do you get these ideas?” Rayno got a real funny look in his eyes.
“My turn,” Rayno said, exiting the airline system.
“What’s next in the stack?” Lisa asked him.
“Yeah, I mean, after garbaging the airlines . . .” Georgie didn’t
realize he was supposed to shut up.
“Georgie! Mike!” Rayno hissed. “Keep watch!” Soft, he added, “It’s
time for The Big One.”
“You sure?” I asked. “Rayno, I don’t think we’re ready.”
“We’re ready.”
Georgie got whiney. “We’re gonna get in big trouble–”
“Wimp,” spat Rayno. Georgie shut up.
We’d been working on The Big One for over two months, but I still
didn’t feel real solid about it. It almost made a clean if/then/else;
if The Big One worked/then we’d be rich/else .
. . it was the else I didn’t have down.
Georgie and me scanned while Rayno got down to business. He got back
into CityNet, called the cracker opsys out of OurNet, and poked it into
Merchant’s Bank & Trust. I’d gotten into them the hard way, but
never messed with their accounts; just did it to see if I could do it.
My data’d been sitting in their system for about three weeks now and
nobody’d noticed. Rayno thought it would be really funny to use one
bank computer to crack the secures on other bank computers.
While he was peeking and poking I heard walking nearby and took a
closer look. It was just some old waster looking for a quiet place to
sleep. Rayno was finished linking by the time I got back. “Okay kids,”
he said, “this is it.” He looked around to make sure we were all watching
him, then held up the term and stabbed the RETURN key. That was
it. I stared hard at the display, waiting to see what else was
gonna be. Rayno figured it’d take about ninety seconds.
The Big One, y’see, was Rayno’s idea. He’d heard about some kids in
Sherman Oaks who almost got away with a five million dollar electronic
fund transfer; they hadn’t hit a hangup moving the five mil around until
they tried to dump it into a personal savings account with a $40 balance.
That’s when all the flags went up.
Rayno’s cool; Rayno’s smart. We weren’t going to be greedy, we were
just going to EFT fifty K. And it wasn’t going to look real strange,
’cause it got strained through some legitimate accounts before we used
it to open twenty dummies.
If it worked.
The display blanked, flickered, and showed:
TRANSACTION COMPLETED. HAVE A NICE DAY.
I started to shout, but remembered I was in a library. Georgie looked
less terrified. Lisa looked like she was going to attack Rayno.
Rayno just cracked his little half smile, and started exiting. “Funtime’s
over, kids.”
“I didn’t get a turn,” Georgie mumbled.
Rayno was out of all the nets and powering down. He turned, slow,
and looked at Georgie through those eyebrows of his. “You are
still on The List.”
Georgie swallowed it ’cause there was nothing else he could do. Rayno
folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.
We got a smartcab outside the library and went off to someplace Lisa
picked for lunch. Georgie got this idea about garbaging up the smartcab’s
brain so that the next customer would have a real state fair ride, but
Rayno wouldn’t let him do it. Rayno didn’t talk to him during lunch,
either.
After lunch I talked them into heading up to Martin’s Micros. That’s
one of my favorite places to hang out. Martin’s the only Older I know
who can really work a computer without blowing out his headchips, and
he never talks down to me, and he never tells me to keep my hands off
anything. In fact, Martin’s been real happy to see all of us, ever since
Rayno bought that $3000 vidgraphics art animation package for Lisa’s
birthday.
Martin was sitting at his term when we came in. “Oh, hi Mike! Rayno!
Lisa! Georgie!” We all nodded. “Nice to see you again. What can I do
for you today?”
“Just looking,” Rayno said.
“Well, that’s free.” Martin turned back to his term and punched a
few more IN keys. “Damn!” he said to the term.
“What’s the problem?” Lisa asked.
“The problem is me,” Martin said. “I got this software package
I’m supposed to be writing, but it keeps bombing out and I don’t know
what’s wrong.”
Rayno asked, “What’s it supposed to do?”
“Oh, it’s a real estate system. Y’know, the whole future-values-in-current-dollars
bit. Depreciation, inflation, amortization, tax credits–”
“Put that in our tang,” Rayno said. “What numbers crunch?”
Martin started to explain, and Rayno said to me, “This looks like
your kind of work.” Martin hauled his three hundred pounds of fat out
of the chair, and looked relieved as I dropped down in front of the
term. I scanned the parameters, looked over Martin’s program, and processed
a bit. Martin’d only made a few mistakes. Anybody could have. I dumped
Martin’s program and started loading the right one in off the top of
my head.
“Will you look at that?” Martin said.
I didn’t answer ’cause I was thinking in assembly. In ten minutes
I had it in, compiled, and running test sets. It worked perfect, of
course.
“I just can’t believe you kids,” Martin said. “You can program easier
than I can talk.”
“Nothing to it,” I said.
“Maybe not for you. I knew a kid grew up speaking Arabic, used to
say the same thing.” He shook his head, tugged his beard, looked me
in the face, and smiled. “Anyhow, thanks loads, Mike. I don’t know how
to . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Say, I just got something in the
other day, I bet you’d be really interested in.” He took me over to
the display case, pulled it out, and set it on the counter. “The latest
word in microterms. The Zeilemann Starfire 600.”
I dropped a bit! Then I ballsed up enough to touch it. I flipped up
the wafer display, ran my fingers over the touch pads, and I just wanted
it so bad! “It’s smart,” Martin said. “Rammed, rammed, and ported.”
Rayno was looking at the specs with that cold look in his eye. “My
300 is still faster,” he said.
“It should be,” Martin said. “You customized it half to death. But
the 600 is nearly as fast, and it’s stock, and it lists for $1400. I
figure you must have spent nearly 3K upgrading yours.”
“Can I try it out?” I asked. Martin plugged me into his system, and
I booted and got on line. It worked great! Quiet, accurate; so maybe
it wasn’t as fast as Rayno’s–I couldn’t tell the difference.
“Rayno, this thing is the max!” I looked at Martin. “Can we work out
some kind of. . . ?” Martin looked back to his terminal, where the real
estate program was still running tests without a glitch.
“I been thinking about that, Mike. You’re a minor, so I can’t legally
employ you.” He tugged on his beard and rolled his tongue around his
mouth. “But I’m hitting that real estate client for some pretty heavy
bread on consulting fees, and it doesn’t seem real fair to me that you
. . . Tell you what. Maybe I can’t hire you, but I sure can buy software
you write. You be my consultant on, oh . . . seven more projects like
this, and we’ll call it a deal? Sound okay to you?”
Before I could shout yes, Rayno pushed in between me and Martin. “I’ll
buy it. List.” He pulled out a charge card from his jumper pocket. Martin’s
jaw dropped. “Well, what’re you waiting for? My plastic’s good.”
“List? But I owe Mike one,” Martin protested.
“List. You don’t owe us nothing.”
Martin swallowed. “Okay Rayno.” He took the card and ran a credcheck
on it. “It’s clean,” Martin said, surprised. He punched up the sale
and started laughing. “I don’t know where you kids get this kind
of money!”
“We rob banks,” Rayno said. Martin laughed, and Rayno laughed, and
we all laughed. Rayno picked up the term and walked out of the store.
As soon as we got outside he handed it to me.
“Thanks Rayno, but . . . but I coulda made the deal myself.”
“Happy Birthday, Mike.”
“Rayno, my birthday is in August.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. You work for me.”
It was near school endtime, so we routed back to Buddy’s. On the way,
in the smartcab, Georgie took my Starfire, gently opened the case, and
scanned the boards. “We could double the baud speed real easy.”
“Leave it stock,” Rayno said.
We split up at Buddy’s, and I took the transys home. I was lucky,
’cause Mom and Dad weren’t home and I could zip right upstairs and hide
the Starfire in my closet. I wish I had cool parents like Rayno does.
They never ask him any dumb questions.
Mom came home at her usual time, and asked how school was. I didn’t
have to say much, ’cause just then the stove said dinner was ready and
she started setting the table. Dad came in five minutes later and we
started eating.
We got the phone call halfway through dinner. I was the one who jumped
up and answered it. It was Georgie’s old man, and he wanted to talk
to my Dad. I gave him the phone and tried to overhear, but he took it
in the next room and talked real quiet. I got unhungry. I never liked
tofu, anyway.
Dad didn’t stay quiet for long. “He what?! Well thank you for
telling me! I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now!” He hung
up.
“Who was that, David?” Mom asked.
“That was Mr. Hansen. Georgie’s father. Mike and Georgie were hanging
around with that punk Rayno again!” He snapped around to look at me.
I’d almost made it out the kitchen door. “Michael! Were you in school
today?”
I tried to talk cool. I think the tofu had my throat all clogged up.
“Yeah…yeah, I was.”
“Then how come Mr. Hansen saw you coming out of the downtown library?”
I was stuck. “I–I was down there doing some special research.”
“For what class? C’mon Michael, what were you studying?”
It was too many inputs. I was locking up.
“David,” Mom said, “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? I’m sure there’s
a good explanation.”
“Martha, Mr. Hansen found something in his computer that Georgie and
Michael put there. He thinks they’ve been messing with banks.”
“Our Mikey? It must be some kind of bad joke.”
“You don’t know how serious this is! Michael Arthur Harris! What have
you been doing sitting up all night with that terminal? What was that
system in Hansen’s computer? Answer me! What have you been doing?!”
My eyes felt hot. “None of your business! Keep your nose out of things
you’ll never understand, you obsolete old relic!”
“That does it! I don’t know what’s wrong with you damn kids,
but I know that thing isn’t helping!” He stormed up to my room.
I tried to get ahead of him all the way up the steps and just got my
hands stepped on. Mom came fluttering up behind as he yanked all the
plugs on my terminal.
“Now David,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh?
He needs that for his homework, don’t you, Mikey?”
“You can’t make excuses for him this time, Martha! I mean it! This
goes in the basement, and tomorrow I’m calling the cable company and
getting his line ripped out! If he has anything to do on computer he
can damn well use the terminal in the den, where I can watch him!” He
stomped out, carrying my smartterm. I slammed the door and locked it.
“Go ahead and sulk! It won’t do you any good!”
I threw some pillows around ’til I didn’t feel like breaking anything
anymore, then I hauled the Starfire out of the closet. I’d watched over
Dad’s shoulders enough to know his account numbers and access codes,
so I got on line and got down to business. I was finished in half an
hour.
I tied into Dad’s terminal. He was using it, like I figured he would
be, scanning school records. Fine. He wouldn’t find out anything; we’d
figured out how to fix school records months ago. I crashed in and gave
him a new message on his vid display.
“Dad,” it said, “there’s going to be some changes around here.”
It took a few seconds to sink in. I got up and made sure the door
was locked real solid. I still got half a scare when he came pounding
up the stairs, though. I didn’t know he could be so loud.
“MICHAEL!!” He slammed into the door. “Open this! Now!”
“No.”
“If you don’t open this door before I count to ten, I’m going to bust
it down! One!”
“Before you do that–”
“Two!”
“Better call your bank!”
“Three!”
“B320-5127-OlR.” That was his checking account access code. He silenced
a couple seconds.
“Young man, I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull–”
“I’m not trying anything. I did it already.”
Mom came up the stairs and said, “What’s going on, David?”
“Shut up, Martha!” He was talking real quiet, now. “What did you do,
Michael?”
“Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you.”
“You mean, you got into the bank computer and erased my checking
account?”
“Savings and mortgage on the condo, too.”
“Oh my God . . .”
Mom said, “He’s just angry, David. Give him time to cool off. Mikey,
you wouldn’t really do that, would you?”
“Then I accessed DynaRand,” I said. “Wiped your job. Your pension.
I got into your plastic, too.”
“He couldn’t have, David. Could he?”
“Michael!” He hit the door. “I’m going to wring your scrawny neck!”
“Wait!” I shouted back. “I copied all your files before I purged!
There’s a way to recover!”
He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. “Give
me the copies right now and I’ll just forget that this happened.”
“I can’t. I mean, I did backups in other computers. And I secured
the files and hid them where only I know how to access.”
There was quiet. No, in a nano I realised it wasn’t quiet, it was
Mom and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the door but all I caught
was Mom saying ‘why not?’ and Dad saying, ‘but what if he is telling
the truth?’
“Okay Michael,” Dad said at last. “What do you want?”
I locked up. It was an embarrasser; what did I want? I hadn’t
thought that far ahead. Me, caught without a program! I dropped half
a laugh, then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get
me I couldn’t get myself, or with Rayno’s help. Rayno! I wanted to get
in touch with him, is what I wanted. I’d pulled this whole thing off
without Rayno!
I decided then it’d probably be better if my Olders didn’t know about
the Starfire, so I told Dad first thing I wanted was my smartterm back.
It took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get it.
He stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I’d really purged
him. He was real subdued when he brought my smartterm back up.
I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn’t come
up with anything more than I wanted them to leave me alone and stop
telling me what to do. I got the smartterm into my room without being
pulped, locked the door, got on line, and gave Dad his job back. Then
I tried to flag Rayno and Georgie, but couldn’t, so I left messages
for when they booted. I stayed up half the night playing a war, just
to make sure Dad didn’t try anything.
I booted and scanned first thing the next morning, but Rayno and Georgie
still hadn’t come on. So I went down and had an utter silent breakfast
and sent Mom and Dad off to work. I offed school and spent the whole
day finishing the war and working on some tricks and treats programs.
We had another utter silent meal when Mom and Dad came home, and after
supper I flagged Rayno had been in the Net and left a remark on when
to find him.
I finally got him on line around eight, and he said Georgie was getting
trashed and probably heading for permanent downtime.
Then I told Rayno all about how I outlooped my old man, but he didn’t
seem real buzzed about it. He said he had something cooking and couldn’t
meet me at Buddy’s that night to talk about it, either. So we got off
line, and I started another war and then went to sleep.
The snoozer said 5:25 when I woke up, and I couldn’t logic how come
I was awake ’til I started making sense out of my ears. Dad was taking
apart the hinges on my door!
“Dad! You cut that out or I’ll purge you clean! There won’t be backups
this time!”
“Try it,” he growled.
I jumped out of my sleepsack, powered up, booted and–no boot. I tried
again. I could get on line in my smartterm, but I couldn’t port out.
“I cut your cable down in the basement,” he said.
I grabbed the Starfire out of my closet and zipped it inside my jumper,
but before I could do the window, the door and Dad both fell in. Mom
came in right behind, popped open my dresser, and started stuffing socks
and underwear in a suitcase.
“Now you’re fritzed!” I told Dad. “I’ll never give you back
your files!” He grabbed my arm.
“Michael, there’s something I think you should see.” He dragged me
down to his den and pulled some bundles of old paper trash out of his
desk. “These are receipts. This is what obsolete old relics like me
use because we don’t trust computer bookkeeping. I checked with work
and the bank; everything that goes on in the computer has to be verified
with paper. You can’t change anything for more than 24 hours.”
“Twenty-four hours? ” I laughed. “Then you’re still fritzed!
I can still wipe you out any day, from any term in CityNet'”
“I know.”
Mom came into the den, carrying the suitcase and kleenexing her eyes.
“Mikey, you’ve got to understand that we love you, and this is for your
own good.” They dragged me down to the airport and stuffed me in a private
lear with a bunch of old gestapos.
I‘ve had a few weeks now to get used to the Von
Schlager Military Academy. They tell me I’m a bright kid and with good
behavior, there’s really no reason at all why I shouldn’t graduate in
five years. I am getting tired, though, of all the older cadets
telling me how soft I’ve got it now that they’ve installed indoor plumbing.
Of course, I’m free to walk out any time I want. It’s only three hundred
miles to Fort McKenzie, where the road ends.
Sometimes at night, after lights out, I’ll pull out my Starfire and
run my fingers over the touchpads. That’s all I can do, since they turn
off power in the barracks at night. I’ll lie there in the dark, thinking
about Lisa, and Georgie, and Buddy’s All-Night Burgers, and all the
fun we used to pull off. But mostly I’ll think about Rayno, and what
great plans he cooks up.
I can’t wait to see how he gets me out of this one.
Afterword
After I sold the
original story in ’82, I continued to work on the story cycle, publishing
bits and pieces here and there throughout the 1980’s. In ’89 I pulled
the major chunks together into the rough form of a novel, and to my
surprise and delight I sold it, to a publisher who later regained his
sanity and decided not to release it.
It took me five years
to recover the rights to this book. By the time I finally did, everyone
in the publishing industry assured me there was no point in pursuing
it further, as the market had spoken with Godlike finality: Cyberpunk
was dead. There was, I was told, no possibility that another cyberpunk
novel would be commercially successful, and there would never be a successful
cyberpunk movie.
The novel, Cyberpunk,
is now available as shareware through my website at:
–Bruce
Bethke
© Bruce Bethke 1980,
1997
“Cyberpunk” was first published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories,
Volume 57, Number 4, November 1983.
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