BEGIN LINE_NOIZ.20 I S S U E - @ ) S E P T M B E R 1 0 , 1 9 9 4 >LiNE NOiZ<<< >>>LiNE NOiZ< -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-l-i-n-e-:-:-2-0-:-:-n-o-i-z-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-: CYbERPUNk I N f O R M A t i 0 N E - Z i N E <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< L I N E N O i Z >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I S S U E - @ ) A U G U S T 2 6 , 1 9 9 4 : File ! : Intro to Issue 20 : Billy Biggs : File @ : The Church of the Cyber-Spiritualists : Andrew Davison : File # : Square One - Part 6 : Kipp Lightburn : File $ : Heavy Duty - Chapter 2 : C.McLean-Campbell : File % : Chiba City Blues Issue 1 : Intro to CCB : Joshua Lellis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --<----<----<----<----L - i - N - e ----- N - o - i - Z ---->---->---->---->-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 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! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --<----<----<----<----L - i - N - e ----- N - o - i - Z ---->---->---->---->-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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... -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- |/ | [ email at ] ------------- |\IPP |_IGHTBURN [ ah804@freenet.carleton.ca ] ------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------L - i - N - E ----- N - o - i - Z ---------------------- File - $ From: C.McLean-Campbell 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 The Heretic Mike Acar (unofficial) _______________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --<----<----<----<----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