Cyberpunk

appreciate everything you’ve done.” Stennie offered the stiff his spindly three-fingered hand to shake. “Sorry if he caused any trouble.”
    The stiff took it gingerly, then shrieked and flew backward. I mean, he jumped almost a meter off the floor. Everyone in the lobby turned, and Stennie opened his hand and waved the joy buzzer. He slapped his tail against the slate in triumph. Stennie’s sense of humor was extreme, but then he was only thirteen years old.
    Stennie’s parents had given him the Nissan Alpha for his twelfth birthday, and we had been customizing it ever since. We installed blue mirror glass, and Stennie painted scenes from the Late Cretaceous on the exterior body armor. We ripped out all the seats, put in a wall-to-wall gel mat and a fridge and a microwave and a screen and a minidish. Comrade had even done an illegal operation on the carbrain so that we could override in an emergency and actually steer the Alpha ourselves with a joystick. It would have been cramped, but we would have lived in Stennie’s car if our parents had let us.
    “You okay there, Mr. Boy?” said Stennie.
    “Mmm.” As I watched the trees whoosh past in the rain, I pretended that the car was standing still and the world was passing me by.
    “Think of something to do, okay?” Stennie had the car and all and he was fun to play with, but ideas were not his specialty. He was probably smart for a dinosaur. “I’m bored.”
    “Leave him alone, will you?” Comrade said.
    “He hasn’t said anything yet.” Stennie stretched and nudged me with his foot. “Say something.” He had legs like a horse: yellow skin stretched tight over long bones and stringy muscle.
    “Prosrees! He just had his genes twanked, you jack.” Comrade always took good care of me. Or tried to. “Remember what that’s like? He’s in damage control.”
    “Maybe I should go to socialization,” Stennie said. “Aren’t they having a dance this afternoon?”
    “You’re talking to me?” said the Alpha. “You haven’t earned enough learning credits to socialize. You’re a quiz behind and forty-five minutes short of E-class. You haven’t linked since—”
    “Just shut up and drive me over.” Stennie and the Alpha did not get along. He thought the car was too strict. “I’ll make up the plugging quiz, okay?” He probed a mess of empty juice boxes and snack wrappers with his foot. “Anyone see my comm anywhere?”
    Stennie’s schoolcomm was wedged behind my cushion. “You know,” I said, “I can’t take much more of this.” I leaned forward, wriggled it free, and handed it over.
    “Of what, poputchik?” said Comrade. “Joyriding? Listening to the lizard here?”
    “Being stunted.”
    Stennie flipped up the screen of his comm and went online with the school’s computer. “You guys help me, okay?” He retracted his claws and tapped at the oversized keyboard.
    “It’s extreme while you’re on the table,” I said, “but now I feel empty. Like I’ve lost myself.”
    “You’ll get over it,” said Stennie. “First question: Brand name of the first wiseguys sold for home use?”
    “NEC-Bots, of course,” said Comrade.
    “Geneva? It got nuked, right?”
    “Da.”
    “Haile Selassie was that king of Ethiopia who the Marleys claim is god, right? Name the Cold Wars: Nicaragua, Angola . . . Korea was the first.” Typing was hard work for Stennie; he did not have enough fingers for it. “One was something like Venezuela. Or something.”
    “Sure it wasn’t Venice?”
    “Or Venus?” I said, but Stennie was not paying attention.
    “All right, I know that one. And that. The Sovs built the first space station. Ronald Reagan—he was the president who dropped the bomb?”
    Comrade reached inside of his coat and pulled out an envelope. “I got you something, Mr. Boy. A get-well present for your collection.”
    I opened it and scoped a picture of a naked dead fat man on a stainless-steel table. The print had a DI verification grid on it, which meant this was the real thing, not a composite. Just above the corpse’s left eye there was a neat hole. It was rimmed with purple that had faded to bruise blue. He had curly gray hair on his head and chest, skin the color of dried mayonnaise, and a wonderfully complicated penis graft. He looked relieved to be dead. “Who was he?” I liked Comrade’s present. It was extreme.
    “CEO of Infoline. He had the wife, you know, the one who stole all the money so she could download