I wrote sixteen lines of comments. I was rebelling. It was Formula talk. My hacker status had been observed by the director. He had asked me in the class. I was observe. I was "walk home". They had me in the social films. They knew about the keyboard and that was cool with them because I was wrong, bad, and guy they could put on the dole. A guy they could invert and write a prescription for every few weeks. They had the formulas. They had the keys. They could waltz we through any number of painful experiences and still keep me drugged. They could plug me in if they wanted but they were too lazy and too awkward. They hawk. They talk. They variously walked on my grave like kids and other teen-age boppers with beer in a cemetery. But hey... I had found my own grave there. They would find me.

Thought it was skull drudgery, but when the form came I signed Field Agent rather than Analyst so came up with nothing. I couldn't shoot a bug. I had to walk through the streets and read guerrilla manuals and other war stories that had no reasonable value. Then the comic and the photo got flashed over the net. They went into small business and so had my brother. It was all social number victim stance type operation. No more graft. No more social coherence. I had lost them to the school. I had my water boys and they had theirs.

I now found the Yankee press mixed with happy Frenchies. The choice seemed obvious I needed the 404 option. Only it wasn't an option it was a clique a choice for them and the crack kingdom. Various legal readings proved that lawyers would cost too much. Or was it, need a new car and half-priced worker owned stock.

What's up? Drove me down back to warn friendly space. Sure I had a better choice but the rules lead me on. I had few choices for women too. Again more rules and tender remembrances. It was all repression until the Catholic women could make it big again with their repression and so called liberation. A big set up for so many others in the night scene. The culture of the night had become a school of artistic expression and culture.

Ain't no computer culture but this guy with a typewriter chooses to go out and be creative make a buck and connect these two concepts in my life. I need social peace and happiness but the lies all the lies. And I had seen the liars too filling up on coke and grass.

I volunteered with the leader, a KGB too. I had a chance at a photo op. I had been a hard copy sorter. I was a research and assistant pig, a lime pig, a green pig, a deep cover. A silent shadow waiting for his limelight, a position near the apron. A gas candle going supernova which would be a grade above. A little wallet floating around the city streets kept in the pocket of the dove, became the chance, became the new age dreamer. I became a new age riot smoker looking after the big crowd, the whole country, the nation, and the state that mix of border and people. The government checks and the newspaper reporter would ask and whine when the guns of the delusional came out to fight.

But the West had choice, the choice of money funds, which meant calling up and contributing or cashing in, and answering the survey. Contrasted with the friends and various government phones there was no answer, there was only the referral. Sure even this had become fictionalised, the keypad was now the phone and the cans, and wires had become upsetting to speak about at dinner. The phone was sold as a transcontinental device and so too the airline, all covered by International treaty and business deal. I called a war zone to say hello. The pacifist was dead and the hotel was gone or without B point to the phone. But it had worked and billed as monthly charge. Monthly I paid and in independence had even gotten involved with phone messages.

I rang up the ancients and the MVS in that haunted castle. There too AT, copier, café pour les bénévole existed. Without youth, student, child, foreigner and artist the place would not function. Functions exist like log, trig and memory only to be digitised and made to seem more neat and commanding. But still it was how do we eat? How do we live? How does this fit the bus schedule? Could we assume or did we know to be cautious with those ancients and beasts from the past? We got an opinion but it seemed schoolish, he hated computers.

I borrowed the disk, saw the curves, and then submitted my report. I was alone but with the sick in at least one long night walk. I curve tested. I woke up the cancer child. She donated or searched out the possibility and planned to do it later. Then we cut her hair off to show the skin, and talked about what tradition this could possibly be classed as in the popular culture. And we knew. She had her visit and came home to the dog. She dialed up and dated, choosing to ask for help.

I looked for more memories, more cartridges, more chips as my leader looked for a new composition for the chip and the leader of the nation supported him no less. A leader who would change every eight years or nine but the support remained. They would find a new chip material or perhaps float the buses. It all seemed such fiction. I was waiting for the axe to fall the end of the contract, the next pull, the vaporous addition of error. The poisoning warning had tipped my eye again. I was finally there with the industrial strength items in catalog form, which, of course, were what I had been trained to understand and even make abstractions about in metaphor and insane cackle within my linguistic experience. But the middle class support the industry with service and consumption right up to the time of payday and the chip arrival a week early.

Was I allowed to press escape or did an apology fit naturally with the language or the concept of social grace? Or was it too read again and again until brainwashed about the position on the kaart, the map, the grid, and the space system? I could look it up and coordinate the point but when it lit up it was just a curve and I had to share my occupation of the point. Obviously I could make a mistake, but I could not afford a virus. I could only read the plan and pitch the Pasture with the Pascal. I could not add the alphabet and still go forward, I needed to go across and find that A point. She too knew about the sum but that was the last time I chatted on the phone with her. Then things became serious, and with two things going she was still exploring her life.

I woke up defeating the procrastination, spending a few hours with code and competition browsing. The profit was not there. The money flowed, that day as it did everyday. Money for the masses, now an even system with all bills a multiple of five. The future will look back and ignore the binary and the decimal, it will see the five, and I will sink into my sank. My quintessential position will envelop the waiting gas pump with the force of my legs driving me further into the dream ride. No it will be masculine, and thus it will be silly or in some subtle form of disrespect meaning it self to be a more perfect expression of respect.

"Hey, have you got a fiver? "

No I don't speak like that. I play what ever and I improvise only pleasing the Spanish. "I want the Spanish. How much is it? You better ask Lennon." He said picking up the books that would teach him procedures that would work. This would bring him work, but the ears would ring, the phone would ring, the energy would be irreversibly used. "Why not get a Spanish language program?" "Thanks mate, but my time is better spent on Estonian soul speak."

So she woke up too today. I read another useless subject. The friend didn't understand why I studied Ecology. The soldier didn't know what I was to do with ecology. Most of the computer people tired to listen to my explanation or test my knowledge but they failed to pay me or really validate that knowledge. So I borrowed the city report. I had it, water measures. I had it, a return to the Fortran language. Self employed, I am. I could cut some code. I could make a formula for the table of values and include the anti-nuclear approach. This was now not just our policy, our hopes and time in vigil and protest, not just our security efforts; our grasping of the safety measures, but it was now, the preferred policy of the authorities. Sure they had to use their slander and their foreign experts, and they were, and still are, the enemies of the poor and all the workers. But they had seen sense on this issue. Yes, we are all connected, by phone, by money, by family, by life, by law, and also to politically lie with science we are connected with radiation poisoning. After all we are atoms, and therefore, we must glow as all others.

"Ya right, pass the camera, let me see the picture. Do I glow?"

So I was observe, I was, "Watch the chalk board now this is very important." I hope we are not thought too stupid in the future that if, writing my equations with a pen, was why I thought I was smart, that I am, just as smart to use a pencil. Rationales, the pen is more modern and he says easier to read or photocopy. And it flows and now many of us want art that flows, sports that flows. The pencil is more traditional, easier to correct mistakes. She said, "Throw out that page I made a mistake."

I wore dress pants and they started to wear. I added up possibly doing that getting them dry-cleaned. Why not my raincoat too? The school T-shirt was also wearing and the school's name had worn. My socks had holes. I learned to throw them in the trash. I threw out three pairs of punk jeans at once. "Congratulations", said my psychiatrist, " you've stopped being a teenager". The clothes were colors, both political, and as I aged, religious shades of black. And the colors were more eye candy. The black to work behind the scenes and to be a beatnik, to be a punk, to be a crook for the simulation, to be the character in the movie, to be a soldier, to be a volunteer in the night.

I came out of the chat environment and made coffee. Checking back with the computer on the desk, I was no longer connected to the Internet. I sat and chatted with my friend. I told of my court case and then chatted through phases of my life mentioning the drinking and the music. Radio chatter made to seem something else. I had been chatting about knowledge and science mentioning the chemistry viewpoint I take in my discovery and guiding me since in my diet and medication use. Also guiding me safely through this modern world, no stink. I then came home after hearing of my friend's own life saving experiences and musical endeavors.

I finally found work. I was Mr. Data Entry. I got good pay for those few shifts. A multiple of five, three five's, in my cash settlement was what I got paid.  I worked for the anarchists getting a genuine contract for the work. My contract was for a lesser amount than my boss but I was his delegate so was allowed to see his contract. The work also involved advise and supportive talk. I asked questions around the project goals. I error checked the data. I corrected it and doubted the boss.  The ED supported my work in the committee meeting.  My boss and I made plans to attend a hacker meeting.

At our union meeting we discussed East Timor and also Kosovo.  He seemed to accept NATO being a human right cop.  I was saying that ethnicity was now considered a bad word and that was wrong.  One of the committee members is to become the director of multiculturalism.  I listened intently at the meeting but said very little.  After all,  I was only on the first rung of the computer profession.  Rungs of ladders are also work though for me.  I like to paint.

I had become the Cyber punk.

Copyright @ 1998-2000 Peter Timusk

Read a second cyberpunk story.