From: gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: STORY: BOY [Revised] (1 of 4)
Keywords: Rat 1.1
Date: 24 Jan 93 15:28:40 GMT
Organization: Fifth Column, Coventry, UK

[This is the revised version of BOY, the first in three stories set in
the Year Of The Rat. The second story, MONKEYTRICK, has also been revised
and will be re-posted too. The third, GHOSTDANCER, is currently under
construction.]

                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

                       	1. Start Switch.

Shitamachi. The Manhattan Outzone. The Year of the Rat.

 Darkness and rain wash the quiet streets of the Outzone. Here, the New
Atlantic City Metroplex Authority in their infinite wisdom have cut off all
electricity, and have left the running of the place to it's inhabitants. In
Shitamachi, the Asahi Tag Team run everything.

 The DJ in Snakestrike is a tiger-haired poserboy with his brain connected to
the turbo sound system at the end of a large dance floor, two thin blue wires
dangling from the tiny electrodes stuck to his forehead. He is engrossed in the
world of the music, every digitized blip and beep and thump pulsing through his
nerves like the very blood in his veins. Electrical signals interfacing
the sound system to his nervous system to allow him complete control over the
mix. The ersatz sensory stimulation that runs through the trodes overrides his
own natural senses. Every three minutes he switches to life to take a request.

 The dance floor swarms with a thousand Shitamachi teenagers, sticking their
heads into the blue lasers and flashing flourescent gloves under the ultra-
violet strobes. Every wall of the club writhes with holographic snake scales,
a reptilian world that's constantly moving.

 There's a hole above the dance floor where people from the level above can
watch the dancers. Up here, on the left at the cocktail bar, Snakestrike
stinks of dancer sweat. It also reeks of business. And for once, Dex has
nothing to do with it.

 Two women serve the cocktail bar. One dark haired with natural beauty, the
other a made up half-Japanese blonde doll who is well known as an Asahi Tag
Teamster. They call themselves sisters when a drunken Japanese Sony slave
plays being a suit to them, despite his slave's company grey jumpsuit. Dex
watches them all with interest, then calls the dark-haired girl over to order
his third tequila slammer.

 Dex is here to see Laughing Simon, the Asahi Tag Team's best technojack, but
he's been stood up again. So, he sits by the bar with his face cupped in his
hand and a pocketful of stimulant wetware in his black pilot's jacket. He is
just thinking of leaving when he feels a tap on his shoulder from the billyboy
on the grey stool next to him; a muscular Australian kid with sideburns, a
blue denim jacket, a quiff and a ginger moustache.

 "So what do you do?" asks the billy.

 "Why, you collecting taxes?" Dex answers. His voice is English. The dark-
haired girl returning with a plastic tumbler wonders if there are any
Americans left in Manhattan. She turns the glass three times and fizzes it
with a bang on the bar and Dex calmly downs it.

 "You look like a ghost to me," says the Australian.

 Dex shakes his head the way he's supposed to when they ask him these
questions. All the time thinking does it show that much? "Sorry, matey. Just
your average ho-hum chipster."

 The billy shuffles closer, his voice slipping gently into a business
tone. "Shame. I'm looking some hot paydata and I really need a ghost. One of
the best. Someone like the Camden Town Boy. Dex Eastman."

 "You've found Dex Eastman, matey. But I gave up the ghost over a year ago."

 The billy makes a swift move from his jacket and Dex can feel a cold
plastic tube dig into his hip. The Australian raises his eyebrows. "Looks
like I've found my man, then." He motions to the exit with his head. "We're
walking."

 "You're walking. I'm here for a drink."

 The Australian squints in Dex's face. "You'd better move, cause if you don't
it's gonna be a Kodak moment."

 Dex sits still. "Go ahead. Shoot me. You won't get out alive. The decision,
as they say, is yours." A flick of Dex's eyes motions the Australian to look
at the dark-haired bargirl. She holds the HK assault shotgun usually kept
under the bar. Casually, and with a feisty smile, she rests the barrel on the
bone of the Australian's nose and crunches the first round into the chamber.

 "If you're takin' anyone out at my bar, it won't be with a plastic pistol,
chum," she says curtly. "Give me the piece and deal with the man friendly-
like."

 The Australian gives over the gun with a taught look from Dex to the bargirl
and back. He wipes sweat from his moustache.

 Dex gives a thankful look to the bargirl. "Respect to you," he says.

 "S'okay," she replies, "If he didn't look so dumb, I'd shoot him anyway." She
puts the guns behind the counter out of reach and and goes back to the
Japanese slave.

 The Boy turns to the Australian. "You've got two minutes. Deal or step."

 The billy talks through clenched teeth. Being challenged down in a club full
of strangers by a girl who looks about seventeen has raised a storm inside
his pride. A storm that has to subside just this once.

 "My name's Priest. I'm a dealer for Kreskin."

 "Kreskin the Joker Lord?"

 "The very same. Kreskin says you two used to work together. You used to do
overnight laundry for him with the World Bank."

 "That was a year ago."

 "Yeah, well he's coming up against some tough opposition from the Texas 
Rangers along the South Route and he needs you to run the Grid for him. Hack
into the Texans' shell and find out the border patrol plans for next week.
Rabies just broke out again in Texas City and Kreskin wants to throw some
vaccine over the line. He says you did it before for him. He says you'll do
it again."

 Dex narrows his eyes. "Read my profile. Ex-decker."

 Priest smiles. "Kreskin said you'd be a little reluctant. I have read your
profile. Ex-decker. Ex-Texan Army tank gunner. Ex-joker. You've done a lot in
your time. Kreskin needs someone he can trust. Someone he knows. And of course
if you refuse..." Priest takes a cold gyuza dumpling from a bowl on the bar and
bites half of it.

 "Kreskin publicly announces my whereabouts to the Texan Army."

 "I think he had something even worse in mind, but you're on the right track.
Strictly business, you understand, Dex. Nothing personal.

 Somehow Dex wishes it was personal, then he'd have an excuse to smash
Priest's face in.

				***

Kitty slips into the Boy's room and hands him steaming ration coffee in a
polystyrene cup. She's like him, another smart young refugee from the
authorities. The Manhattan Outzone is an excellent place to hide; but she
wasn't born to this, and no one could hide forever.

 She looks at Dex through superchromed Sony eyes as he drinks his coffee,
sitting on his black leather swivel chair and fidgetting, and she realises
that she knows very little about him. He grew up in a dustzone in the
Thames Midland Metroplex and found a way out through running the Grid; the
Camden Town Boy. He was a decking legend by the age of fourteen, teaching
others like Dagger and Man Friday to run the Grid. Then something happened
and he left for Texas, where he joined the Texan Tank Corps, fighting running 
battles against the nomad joker clans who smuggled in  anything  from  weapons  
to  computer  parts  to stolen expensive  petroleum  plastics,  figuring  
that  the  Texan's  high  data security would make him harder to track down.

 She heard that he turned joker after he shot his tank commander to stop the
officer firing a 120mm hesh-3 round into a busload of kids. Unable to face
a court martial, he deserted and joined Kreskin's nomads as a driver running
recon missions, and every once in a while he would launder joker clan money
through the Grid.

 Kreskin got him a new identity and he left the game for the Manhattan Outzone,
where he moved in with Kitty and the Asahi Tag Team and became a chipster.
Once, he told her that his main ambition was to live a normal life. Buy himself
a piece of Happyville. The biggest problem he had was dropping his past.

 Kitty only has to see the look on his face to know that the past is on it's
way back.

 Dex downs the coffee and crushes the cup inside a sinewy hand. "You don't think
I should do this, do you?"

 Kitty stands with her back to the wall by the door to the kitchen, her arms
neatly folded over her OMNI t-shirt. She bites her bottom lip.

 "No," she says to him. She kicks herself off the wall and leaves the room,
closing the door behind her.

 Dex is alone in a grimy-grey room with a swivel chair, a desk and a foam
matress to sleep on. Something inside him claws his stomach. An empty feeling.

 A hunger.

 He takes the machinery out of their bubble-plastic wrapping, it's been in
storage in a tea chest in Kitty's room for so long that the wrapping sticks
to the molded form of the Sony electronics, making the job more difficult. The
Neuro-Sensory Transfer jacks, like platinum beads with microthin wires are 
wrapped around the cyberdeck. A procured military item in cold matt black, 
designated Ares IV.

 The Ares IV has a stream of wires that plug into the input port of his stolen,
unlicensed Fednet computer. Built in Poland, it's bright red plastic casing
and moulded keyboard with old chunky keys seems tasteless to all but the
billy tribe. Dex is no billy, he's a New Church throwback, but he likes things 
in strange colours. The whole setup that has been updated for high-speed bias 
by Laughing Simon is plugged into the socket that runs a tap into the 
groundline. He jacks the NST plugs into two tiny sockets behind his right ear 
and switches on all the equipment. "On" telltales glisten in the darkness of 
his room. The screen on the Fednet computer displays a prompt. Everything's 
ready to go except Dex.

 He sits crosslegged in front of the setup and hesitates. The hunger inside his
guts claws him again, and he nearly buckles with tension. With his left hand,
he fingers the keyboard of the Fednet computer, preparing himself for sensory
takeover.

 With the other poised over the Ares IV, he touches the Start switch.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
-- 
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |
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