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Playing witrh Cyberpunk before I go to work
So, opening page one or two?
Opening One (which will turn all steamy in a couple pages when she bumps into Gemini)
“In the name of the Artificer, Programmer and Debugger, go in peace.”
“And the people said, ‘Amen’.”
Zara Broine’s avatar, the icy sorceress known as Technomancer, rose smoothly from her seat in the virtual pew of the Church of Christ, Programmer. She moved out into her perception of the Net: a faux-medieval village scene of thatched huts and street markets. In the distance, she could see castles and towers and cathedral spires that marked major corporations and public services.
The congregants milled around her. Her program let her see them as their avatars, but dressed them to fit her reality. This made for oddities like the anthropomorphic lion in a houppeland and a tattooed Maori warrior in hose and folly bells.
Technomancer made the jump to her fortress, an instantaneous translation between net-coordinates. She smiled at her reflection in the seamless obsidian wall of the tower.
Warning Intrusion Countermeasures, ice in common parlance, started a data point away from the structure. More aggressive ice, including a couple of pieces that could flatline the best hacker, was arrayed nearer the tower.
Technomancer herself gave off proper recognitions codes and frequencies, so the forest of thorns parted for her and the drawbridge lowered to let her cross the alligator-filled moat. The red-hot iron caltrops scurried off on their newly-animated legs, letting her pass. A door appeared for her in the glass wall of the tower.
She puttered about the tower for a time, replacing a damaged section of the thorn coding where some cowboy on a dare had tried breaking in. She had ice that could kill and maim, and all the runners past their third run knew the Technomancer’s Tower had nothing of value. But some always had to learn the hard way
The Wheelman had been one, years ago. He’d dared the ice, breaking it, melting through with the fiery wheel he rode. He’d cracked her tower, battering until the obsidian fractured enough for him to slip in.
She’s brain-burned him. Hr own programs had flown like spells, screaming along his backtrail in the net to where Erik Ezekiel’s body lay helpless on the conforma-lounge, IV drip and catheter in place for a long run. Once there, the program had exploded through his jack, frying his central nervous system
Only hasty intervention by his bedwarmer had kept the flatline from being permanent. As it was, the Wheelman would never walk again, a condition for which he held undying enmity towards the Technomancer.
Opening Two
Eric guided his wheelchair down to the situation room. He had dozens, for various terrains and occasions, but he favored the antique manual one. He liked powering himself, liked the way the wheels bit at his hands.
He smiled, as he always did, at the ranks of what he called his Immortals. Named for the guards of ancient Persia, they had each failed him and now served him forever. Or at least as long as they stayed sane.
He had done his best to make them more than human. Each sat in his own temperature controlled niche, net-visor firmly in place. The visor blocked all external input. The chair enclosed each Immortal from chest to hips, providing nourishment and carrying away waste. A high-tech womb, essentially, but without the need to exercise the limbs. All Immortals were quadruple amputees.
Eric pressed the summoning button and slipped the interface into his own jack. Forty Immortals appeared before him as their avatars. He sat before them, as always, on a horizontal wheel of fire.
“What news on the Rialto, children?”
Datazon, the lone female Immortal, always went first. She spoke for twenty of the Immortals. She stepped forward, her flowing red hair caught into a classical Greek style. Her bronze cuirass and greaves gleamed. “Master of the Wheel, word is put forth of a new satellite weapon. The Gemini poses as a weather-control satellite but can be used against the people.”
“How, dear girl?”
She shook her head. “My phalanx has not discovered this.”
The Hawk, who looked like the Egyptian statues of Horus and spoke for ten, put in, “We hear the code is around. We have not found it.” The shrieks of the hunting bird resolved themselves into the words the beak could not articulate.
Lord Ragnarok, a fierce-looking pseudo-Norse warrior who spoke for five, had no news. Neither did the blue pyramid that was Fermi’s Bastard. His five had found nothing.
At a motion from Eric, the crowd of faux-warriors, fantasy characters and the lone pleasure boy dispersed. The last avatar amused Eric to no end. Marty had been a virgin so unattractive that despite the most-recent bedwarmer’s suicide, Eric had only offered him Immortality or death.
Now the overweight, ugly youth was slim, gorgeous boy who sought out data in the form of orgasms, dodged Intrusion Countermeasures that took the shape of cops and jealous lovers, and enjoyed himself thoroughly. In this form, he even tempted Eric.
They would find what he sought. If they didn’t, he would punish them. He had made their reality so unpleasant, they preferred the quasi-reality of the net and their taken avatars. Loss of the net was always enough to compel them to redouble their efforts. Too much time spent out of the net drove the Immortals mad.
“Find it,” he sent after them all. “Find it or you all lose the net for a week.” They scattered.
“Too good to do your own dirty work, Wheelman?” The black-clad sorceress juggled a ball of green fire, which caught the austere planes of her face and the white blaze at her left temple.
“Technomancer,” he smiled. “Someday, you too will be among them. You, and Irishgirl and the Furyblade and Timberwolf. All of you will be Immortals and you will sling you green fire for my ends.”
“You’re a madman. You know women don’t respond well to your alterations.”
“I’m only mad if I fail. If I succeed, I am a god who revolutionized net-running. My name will be remembered with Turing and Gates and Gore. And I trust you have brains enough to overcome the physical. Good evening, Technomancer.” His wheel began to drift toward the horizon.
“Wheelman,” she nodded and vanished.
Opening One (which will turn all steamy in a couple pages when she bumps into Gemini)
“In the name of the Artificer, Programmer and Debugger, go in peace.”
“And the people said, ‘Amen’.”
Zara Broine’s avatar, the icy sorceress known as Technomancer, rose smoothly from her seat in the virtual pew of the Church of Christ, Programmer. She moved out into her perception of the Net: a faux-medieval village scene of thatched huts and street markets. In the distance, she could see castles and towers and cathedral spires that marked major corporations and public services.
The congregants milled around her. Her program let her see them as their avatars, but dressed them to fit her reality. This made for oddities like the anthropomorphic lion in a houppeland and a tattooed Maori warrior in hose and folly bells.
Technomancer made the jump to her fortress, an instantaneous translation between net-coordinates. She smiled at her reflection in the seamless obsidian wall of the tower.
Warning Intrusion Countermeasures, ice in common parlance, started a data point away from the structure. More aggressive ice, including a couple of pieces that could flatline the best hacker, was arrayed nearer the tower.
Technomancer herself gave off proper recognitions codes and frequencies, so the forest of thorns parted for her and the drawbridge lowered to let her cross the alligator-filled moat. The red-hot iron caltrops scurried off on their newly-animated legs, letting her pass. A door appeared for her in the glass wall of the tower.
She puttered about the tower for a time, replacing a damaged section of the thorn coding where some cowboy on a dare had tried breaking in. She had ice that could kill and maim, and all the runners past their third run knew the Technomancer’s Tower had nothing of value. But some always had to learn the hard way
The Wheelman had been one, years ago. He’d dared the ice, breaking it, melting through with the fiery wheel he rode. He’d cracked her tower, battering until the obsidian fractured enough for him to slip in.
She’s brain-burned him. Hr own programs had flown like spells, screaming along his backtrail in the net to where Erik Ezekiel’s body lay helpless on the conforma-lounge, IV drip and catheter in place for a long run. Once there, the program had exploded through his jack, frying his central nervous system
Only hasty intervention by his bedwarmer had kept the flatline from being permanent. As it was, the Wheelman would never walk again, a condition for which he held undying enmity towards the Technomancer.
Opening Two
Eric guided his wheelchair down to the situation room. He had dozens, for various terrains and occasions, but he favored the antique manual one. He liked powering himself, liked the way the wheels bit at his hands.
He smiled, as he always did, at the ranks of what he called his Immortals. Named for the guards of ancient Persia, they had each failed him and now served him forever. Or at least as long as they stayed sane.
He had done his best to make them more than human. Each sat in his own temperature controlled niche, net-visor firmly in place. The visor blocked all external input. The chair enclosed each Immortal from chest to hips, providing nourishment and carrying away waste. A high-tech womb, essentially, but without the need to exercise the limbs. All Immortals were quadruple amputees.
Eric pressed the summoning button and slipped the interface into his own jack. Forty Immortals appeared before him as their avatars. He sat before them, as always, on a horizontal wheel of fire.
“What news on the Rialto, children?”
Datazon, the lone female Immortal, always went first. She spoke for twenty of the Immortals. She stepped forward, her flowing red hair caught into a classical Greek style. Her bronze cuirass and greaves gleamed. “Master of the Wheel, word is put forth of a new satellite weapon. The Gemini poses as a weather-control satellite but can be used against the people.”
“How, dear girl?”
She shook her head. “My phalanx has not discovered this.”
The Hawk, who looked like the Egyptian statues of Horus and spoke for ten, put in, “We hear the code is around. We have not found it.” The shrieks of the hunting bird resolved themselves into the words the beak could not articulate.
Lord Ragnarok, a fierce-looking pseudo-Norse warrior who spoke for five, had no news. Neither did the blue pyramid that was Fermi’s Bastard. His five had found nothing.
At a motion from Eric, the crowd of faux-warriors, fantasy characters and the lone pleasure boy dispersed. The last avatar amused Eric to no end. Marty had been a virgin so unattractive that despite the most-recent bedwarmer’s suicide, Eric had only offered him Immortality or death.
Now the overweight, ugly youth was slim, gorgeous boy who sought out data in the form of orgasms, dodged Intrusion Countermeasures that took the shape of cops and jealous lovers, and enjoyed himself thoroughly. In this form, he even tempted Eric.
They would find what he sought. If they didn’t, he would punish them. He had made their reality so unpleasant, they preferred the quasi-reality of the net and their taken avatars. Loss of the net was always enough to compel them to redouble their efforts. Too much time spent out of the net drove the Immortals mad.
“Find it,” he sent after them all. “Find it or you all lose the net for a week.” They scattered.
“Too good to do your own dirty work, Wheelman?” The black-clad sorceress juggled a ball of green fire, which caught the austere planes of her face and the white blaze at her left temple.
“Technomancer,” he smiled. “Someday, you too will be among them. You, and Irishgirl and the Furyblade and Timberwolf. All of you will be Immortals and you will sling you green fire for my ends.”
“You’re a madman. You know women don’t respond well to your alterations.”
“I’m only mad if I fail. If I succeed, I am a god who revolutionized net-running. My name will be remembered with Turing and Gates and Gore. And I trust you have brains enough to overcome the physical. Good evening, Technomancer.” His wheel began to drift toward the horizon.
“Wheelman,” she nodded and vanished.
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