FW: cyberpunk parody (fwd)

Long, yes.  Worth the read, oh my God yes.


> NOTE:  This story originally appeared in alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo, a
> group whose postings are stories that take place in a virtual dystopia
> of high tech and street violence in the vein of William Gibson's novel,
> `Neuromancer'....
>
> [Ed:  Honourable Mention in the Original Comedy Awards.]
>
> I had logged myself into the computer-generated bar room as a little,
> furry, harmless dog.  I didn't want trouble.  I needed to read the X
> Windows/Motif 1.1 manual, so I came to the bar and asked Ratz to fix
> the documentation data in liquid form for me.  It made a bitter,
> painful drink, but it was better than spending days turning pages in
> realspace.
>
> Ratz put a bucket of liquid in front of me.
>
> "I wanted a glass of docs, Ratz.  What the hell is this?"  I barked.
>
> "Motif don't fit in a glass anymore," he barked back.
>
> I looked at the liquid.  It was totally opaque to me.
>
> Then someone yelled.  The surveillance screen had identified an
> attacker.  We had three seconds before it got to the bar.  Everyone
> ducked under the furniture and pulled weapons.  Since I was too small a
> target to register, I just sat back and watched the action.
>
> A Hunter-Killer blew a hole in the wall right next to the doorless
> doorway.  This Killer used spells instead of weapons.  The design was
> humanoid, but oxidation of the copper skin had turned it green.  It
> wore black robes and a cone-shaped, aerodynamic black hat.
>
> It raised its broomstick to let fly some more pyro, but then it was
> crushed by a farm house that fell from the sky.
>
> Nobody moved.  A young girl reluctantly stepped out of the house, her
> eyes wide.  She wasn't in streetware, just a frilly dress and pigtails.
> Not your typical annihilatrix.  As a matter of fact, she was a sweet
> piece, young and fresh.  I decided I might like to cut myself a slice
> of this action.  I jumped off my bar stool, looked cute, trotted over
> and jumped up into her arms.  She caught me and started petting me.  She
> said, "Doggie, it doesn't look like we're dialed into Kansas Public
> Access Unix anymore."
>
> Then a tall angular woman came out from under cover.  She wore battle
> leathers, chain mail, knee-high boots, and steel blue op-implants.  Her
> fingerknives were just retracting back under her flesh and her
> back-ratcheting Harley-Bronson chain gun was spinning down.
>
> The new girl obviously hadn't seen a razorgirl before, and she held me
> tight to her bosom.  This was working out well for me.
>
> The razorqueen said, "Christ!  You dusted an HK!  That was the
> Hokusai-Sendai Witch of the Far East, their best magic weaver.  What're
> you packin', sister?"
>
> "Who are you?"  my girl asked.
>
> "You don't know?  I synthesized the geometry for this bar.  I'm Liralen
> Li, the Good Witch of the Pacific Northwest."  She shouted to everyone
> else that it was safe, and the other customers came out from hiding.
> The visitor was astonished by the many dwarves that had been in hiding.
> Liralen explained, "They're bonsai ninja, you know, a strain of samurai
> engineered to grow small like bonsai trees.  They're very quiet and can
> hide anywhere.  You're not from around here, are you, sister?"
>
> "No.  But a while ago I jacked into the system and now I can't get out.
> I'm stuck in the cyberspace."
>
> Stuck?  That's weird, I thought.  I was close enough to her construct
> that I could follow her connection back to its realspace origin.  She
> had jacked into a simple simulation called `Preparing Your Home for a
> Natural Disaster', but now she was flatlining.  The contents of her
> mind had been sucked into the matrix.  If she got killed in virtual
> space, there'll be no mind left for real space.
>
> "What are you called?"  Liralen asked her.  "I don't mean true name, I
> mean virtual name, battle name."
>
> "Battle name?  I don't have one."
>
> "In that case, warrior," Liralen smiled, "We shall call you Ruby."
>
> Why "Ruby," I wondered?  A ruby is red like a cherry, so a ruby is a
> cherry that that will never be broken.  Oh no, is my new girl a ruby?
>
> Someone yelled, "Attacker rezzing up!"  Tables were again overturned
> and weapons were ready to spit a hundred mercury-filled copper-jacketed
> hollowpoints at the cloudy entity taking shape in the center of the
> room.  The cloud congealed into an identical sister of the crushed
> Killer.  Instead of hitting us with bio-lysis vectors, the Killer went
> straight for the crushed sister.  It tried to take some shimmering,
> polished red shoes off the dead legs.  But the shoes disappeared from
> the crushed witch, which derezzed.  The treads appeared on Ruby.
>
> Liralen smirked, "To the victor go the spoils.  The new chick becomes
> owner of the dead hag's functionality, and only owner has `execute'
> privileges."
>
> The witch screeched, "Give me those slippers."  She reached for the
> girl's legs but Liralen had slapped a serious non-intrusion field on
> them that fried the witch's fingers.  The witch retreated.  While
> scanning herself out of the bar, she screamed, "The ruby slippers will
> be mine.  I'll get you, my pretty.  And your little dog, too!"
>
> Suck broomstick, bullet head.
>
> Ruby asked Liralen how she could get out of the matrix.  She didn't
> know, but she knew the shoes were powerful enough to provide an answer.
> "The rubies refract the optical data so that it's accessible
> holographically, and it operates at exactly one wavelength so that with
> simple harmonics the signal is maintained by constructive interference.
> But I can't figure out how they're modulated externally...."  She
> assured us that the witch couldn't use their power while Ruby wore
> them.  She had heard of an expert on cyberspace, an entity called the
> Guru of News, who resided at the terminating node of YelloNet.  People
> claimed he was the greatest computer mind imaginable....
>
> I went with the babe along YelloNet.  If I helped her, maybe she'd give
> up some of the goodies.  She seemed attracted to me.  It helps to be
> hairy like a foreign guy.
>
> I led the way.  She was clueless, which is just how I like them.  An
> old-fashioned girl.  You don't see many like her on the network.  Most
> of the chicks I see, with their razornails, retracting fangs, and
> strychnine-tipped barbed pubic wire, they're just so...  independent.
>
> For some reason, Ruby decided to make friends with every skin job and
> genetic fuckup on YelloNet.  First, we met an herbanoid, a genetic
> experiment that involved a vegetative covering over a human head and
> bodily armature, creating a warrior who could survive on nothing but
> sunlight and water.  He told Ruby how badly he needed a brain
> augmentation.  Like who doesn't.  But my chick thought the Guru of News
> could help him, so he joined us.  I wondered if barley dick was making
> a play for my woman, but it was okay.  This chummer wasn't too bright,
> and he had mega problems with his locomotor mechanicals.
>
> The three of us came upon a guy with the sorriest prosthetic body armor
> job I've ever seen.  He was a total makeover; only the brain was
> original equipment.  He didn't even have a synthflesh covering, just
> plain uncontoured titanium-beryllium.  He told the chick he desperately
> wanted emotion implants, and she invited him along.  I had metal head
> take the point, since he'd made us a radar hot spot.
>
> The four of us encountered a lion who was in an advanced stage of
> chemical intellect enhancement.  He walked upright and could speak.  He
> had the hyper-wants for fear blockers to be included in the hormone
> treatments so he'd be bad enough to head-honch his burgh.  The lion
> needed the disinhibitors, and some hype wouldn't hurt either; he wasn't
> the type who would cover your back in a face-off with a bunch of
> BronxSprawl hyenaboys.  Naturally, my chick suggested he go with us to
> the Guru of News.
>
> We finally got to the YelloNet terminus, where there was serious
> graphics, including a huge gleaming green tower and walls enclosing an
> entire city.  Everything was green; I wondered if that meant the
> cyberjock behind it had access to EPA computer banks, or maybe Federal
> Reserve computers....
>
> There was a phasic defense layer.  The ruby slippers cracked it in a
> second, but I didn't know how.
>
> We were welcomed into their system.  The chick was impressed by some
> horse with real-time setcolor.  Big deal.  The happy natives enhanced
> our visuals, and we went to the big interface.
>
> We entered a huge vaulted cathedral.  At the front was an altar, a
> construct of the Guru of News.  From the haze emerged two glowering
> hollow eyes suspended above an angry mouth.  He had cyberspace
> abilities ultra deluxe, and the attitude to match.  I tried to get
> close enough to trace his connection back, but flames shot up from the
> altar and booming aurals pushed us away.
>
> We told him what we needed.  We offered to pay him, but he said he did
> not take money.  No money?  His chariot was definitely pulled by
> Federal Reserve horses.  The Guru said that he would magically appear
> and give us what we wanted as soon as we snagged the source of the
> witch's power, her broomstick.  If I'd had a humanoid construct, I
> would've asked him if he was outa his fuckin' mind.  But, like I said,
> I didn't want trouble.
>
> We left the emerald construct and wandered the matrix, more clueless
> than ever.  Everyone was frightened of what virtual beasts they may
> encounter.  Did they think about what it would be like to jack out and
> find that the witch had nulled your credit chip?  How about if the
> witch fingered you as a compatible neuron donor to be used for spare
> parts in the brain rejuvenation of an impossibly rich German
> technomogul?
>
> We soon found something to agree on fearing.  I recognized the witch's
> armada of chimpanzees, soggy with evolution accelerators and operating
> implanted wings with control taps in the spinal cord.  It was FTP, the
> Flying Transportation Primates.  They swooped down and picked us off
> the ground, and in seconds all our data had been transferred into the
> witch's camp.
>
> Surrounded by the witch's armed minions, we were marched back to the
> bar room where we started.  As the mindless guards marched, they
> chanted in hex, "  ...Oh Eee Oh, Oh One..."
>
> We came to bar room's defense surveillance screen.  The guards stayed
> behind while the witch walked us five prisoners into the bar room.
>
> When we entered the room, there was no sign of life except for the
> laser sights wandering like 2D lightning bugs over the witch's robes.
>
> The witch shouted, "Liralen Li, I've come to make a deal.  Take your
> force field off the ruby slippers and change their protection so that
> both you and I have group access.  Then both of us can learn the powers
> of the slippers.  Otherwise the white girl is toast."
>
> From her hiding place, Liralen muttered, "If she kills the flatlining
> chick, it's real death, not just virtual.  I'm feeling a pang of
> compassion; I thought I had all that removed surgically.  Besides, the
> ruby slippers are complex; by the time the witch learns how they work,
> maybe I'll have learned to use them too."  She came out from her cover.
> "Ok, hag, I'll do biz.  As of now, we both have access to the treads.
> Now free the girl and go get a nose job."
>
> But the witch did not leave.  Red laser light spread from the shoes
> throughout the room.  It heated all metal objects until they glowed.
> Leather and skin seared, and guns, arrows, shinjuki, razorfrisbees,
> shields, and darts hit the floor.
>
> The light subsided, giving way to the witch's rasping cackle.
>
> Liralen growled, "The bitch already knows how to use the slippers!"  She
> lunged toward the slippers, but the witch's new defense screen bounced
> her back.
>
> "Careful, Liralen," the witch smarmed, "I wouldn't want you to hurt
> yourself before I can torture you.  The ruby slippers have several
> forms of torture, accessible via a simple interface involving the
> clicking of the heels."  The witch lectured while the rest of us prayed
> to virtual gods, who sent down virtual answers.  "For instance, a
> single heel click would turn your face inside-out and then splash you
> with aftershave.  A double click would fill each neuron cell body with
> Drano.  On the other hand, three clicks forces a jack out to realspace.
> This is intriguing, as it would allow me to jack my mind into your
> realspace body, overwriting your mind...."
>
> Liralen cowered on the floor, powerless.  "I gave her the ruby slippers
> on a silver platter," she muttered.  "I'm a cyberputz...."
>
> Ruby was clicking her heels together, but nothing happened.  The witch
> shook her head in pity.  "It appears you don't have access to the
> interface, my pretty."
>
> The girl squealed thinly, "You're a terrible, horrible person."  She
> picked up my bucket of Motif documentation liquid and threw it on the
> witch.
>
> Obviously, this didn't do anything.
>
> The witch was omnipotent, she'd had terminal PMS even before she was
> soaked with my bucket, and I was a small defenseless dog.  Perfect.
> Just perfect.
>
> The witch screeched to the girl, "That was foolish.  I'm inclined to
> move the floorboards under your feet and perform a single heel click."
> The purple of rage was showing through the green skin.  "You know what
> one click could do to your cute little dog's head?  Huh?  In a text
> widget with default translations, one click would grab the keyboard
> focus and begin appending characters to the inter-client clipboard's
> primary selection buffer.  That's what it would do!"
>
> The bonsai ninja looked at each other quizzically.  The witch's brow
> furrowed for a moment, but then was rejuvenated with rage.  "Forget one
> heel click.  Let me remind you of the exquisite agony of two heel
> clicks?  Two clicks in the command history list of a command widget
> would remove the first item from the history list if it has
> XmNhistoryMaxItems items, append the selected list item to the history
> buffer, and clear the command edit what the fuck'm I talking about?"
>
> Liralen murmured, "It's Motif.  She's confusing her interface with a
> Motif interface - "
>
> "Quiet!  I am still omnipotent!"  the witch cried.  "You are nothing.
> You are all but subwidgets in a composite container whose logical tab
> group I have registered the traversal order of.  I can merely point at
> you and your popup dialogue will be unmapped unless XmNautoUnmanage is
> False."
>
> She collapsed to her knees.  "Help me.  I'm becoming a Motif dweeb."
> She begged, "Couldn't you have just poured something on me that would
> have melted me to an agonizing death...?"
>
> It was such a pitiful sight that we would have helped her if we could.
> But it was too late.  The complexity, the obscurity, the pettiness, the
> fact that XmNcolumns and XmNnumColumns do the same thing but they're
> different but there's no message if you use the wrong one, they had
> already claimed her.
>
> Ruby picked up the witch's broomstick.  Immediately the far wall of the
> room gave way to enormous, flaming, gleaming, boundless, angry visage
> of the Guru of News.  The room was zonked out on awe.
>
> "You have completed your task," the voice echoed, "and you shall now be
> given that for which you have asked.  However, I should point out that
> these gifts are given on an `as is' basis, without warranty of any
> kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the
> implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular
> purpose...."
>
> I'd had enough of this clown.  While he droned on, I traced his
> connection back and put his realspace facade on the bar's monitor.
>
> He was little dumpy guy with long hair like spanish moss, typing his
> dialogue feverishly into an Emacs window.
>
> The big eyes of the Guru's construct swung to the monitor.  The voice
> boomed "What?  Um.  Pay no attention to the man on the monitor.  I am
> the great and powerful Guru.  My forces are legion.  My privileges are
> super.  My power is limited only by FCC EM requirements.  Oh, dear...."
>
> Everybody ignored the flaming altar and turned to the monitor.  The
> imposing face on the altar derezzed.
>
> The Guru appeared as a likeness of himself, in jeans, keds, and a black
> szechuan-stained Grateful Dead tee-shirt.
>
> Ruby walked up to him.  "You're not a mongo network hack at all.  You've
> got no jack, not even a datasuit and sens-phones.  And you've got no
> graphics throw.  Why are you the Guru of News?"
>
> "Actually," he said, "I'm the Guru of Gnu's.  I write programs, but I
> don't do much with networks and cyberspace and such.  The face you saw
> is, um, just a semi-colon and a left parenthesis, in a very large font.
> And my city was all green because I only have enough throughput to
> render in one color channel."
>
> The girl said, "You can't help us at all!  We should strip you, put
> steak sauce on your balls, and give you to the doberwomen."
>
> Liralen whispered, "The chick learns fast...."
>
> The guru blubbered, "I can give you all what you desire.  Just as I
> promised...."
>
> He slapped his hand on the leafy shoulder of the plant-human hybrid.
> "My friend, you desire a greater brain.  The greatest geniuses have no
> more brains than you, but they do have one thing you don't have.  A
> Next Machine."  The guru placed on the table a black cube with monitor
> and keyboard.  The machine began to play `Pomp and Circumstance'.  The
> hybrid caressed the black cube gently, like he was an ape in 2001.  "Now
> you can pretend to know the Oxford English Dictionary, the works of
> Shakespeare, and, with Mathematica, you can solve any equation."
>
> The hybrid typed "2 + 2" on the Mathematica command line.  The Next
> Machine ran a multi-grid iterative Jacobian relaxation with accelerated
> annealing and in minutes printed out the answer "3.9999999999999".  The
> crowd applauded and the hybrid stood proud.
>
> The guru stepped over to the guy with the unmolded titanium skin.  "You,
> sir, seek greater emotion.  The deepest and most compassionate people
> have no more capacity for emotion than you, but they do have something
> you don't have.  A subscription to alt.callahans, the InterNet therapy
> group."
>
> A tear came to the metallic man's eye.  "I haven't even read the first
> posting, and I'm already so overwhelmed with sincerity and mutual
> support that I could puke."
>
> The guru addressed the partly-sentient lion.  "You desire the courage
> that will provoke fear in your opponents.  Some people are feared by
> all, and yet they are physically less forbidding than you.  Their
> secret is that they talk only through newsgroups so that they can
> insult people without getting beat up."  The guru moved to the remnants
> of his emerald altar.  "My dear friend, I bequeath to you this altar,
> which, as you have seen, can create large flames out of nothing at all.
> If you post these flames frequently on rec.arts.sf-lovers, then news
> readers will come to fear your wrath and probably leave the group
> entirely."
>
> The lion touched the altar and a flame jumped up.  He turned to the
> crowd, raised a finger, and said rigidly, "It is intuitively obvious to
> the most casual observer that my esteemed colleague's idea is absurd
> both in theory and in practice."  The crowd applauded him.  He said,
> "Hey, I insulted an innocent stranger, and I have no idea what I'm
> talking about.  This is great!"
>
> The guru then offered to help Ruby.  Since he was jacking out of the
> matrix, he would take the girl with him.  However, the guru really
> wasn't a slick cyberspace jockey, and he lost the symbolic link to the
> chick.  However, Liralen had back-engineered the interface to the ruby
> slippers.  Chanting the mantra that Liralen suggested, the girl clicked
> her heels three times and left the matrix cleanly.  Her mind was loaded
> back into her realspace brain, and brainwave activity returned to
> normal.
>
> The girl, me, and the three mutants would become successful in the
> children's simul-stimul biz.  The girl filled out and was my main
> squeeze for a while.  Then she got into leather, shaved her head, had
> her eyes pierced, and left me for a hyper-testosterated message
> bouncer.
>
> I talked to the lion recently.  He's permanently lit up on hype,
> chicks, and credit these days.  He said he had a new virtual reality
> scam involving a witch and a wardrobe.  I'm not sure I'm ready for
> that.