Cyberpunk

sweater over a white shirt. “Augsburg?” said Little Boy Blue. Fine blond hair drooped from beneath his tweed cap.
    “Try Wolf of Landshut,” I said. Stennie and I had spent a lot of time fighting VE wars in full armor. “Nice shorts.” Stennie’s costume reminded me of Christopher Robin. Terminally cute.
    “It’s not fair,” said the snowman, who I did not recognize. “He says this is what he actually looks like.” The snowman was standing in a puddle that was dripping onto the rug below us. Great effect.
    “No,” said Stennie, “what I said was I would look like this if I hadn’t done something about it, okay?”
    I had not known Stennie before he was a dinosaur. “No wonder you got twanked.” I wished I could have saved this image, but Playroom was copy-protected.
    “You’ve been twanked? No joke?” The great horned owl ruffled in alarm. She had a girl’s voice. “I know it’s none of my business, but I don’t understand why anyone would do it. Especially a kid. I mean, what’s wrong with good old-fashioned surgery? And you can be whoever you want in a VE.” She paused, waiting for someone to agree with her. No help. “Okay, so I don’t understand. But when you mess with your genes, you change who you are. I mean, don’t you like who you are? I do.”
    “We’re so happy for you.” Stennie scowled. “What is this, mental health week?”
    “We’re rich,” I said. “We can afford to hate ourselves.”
    “This may sound rude”—the owl’s big blunt head swiveled from Stennie to me—“but I think that’s sad.”
    “Yeah well, we’ll try to work up some tears for you, birdie,” Stennie said.
    Silence. In the East Room, the band turned the volume up.
    “Anyway, I’ve got to be going.” The owl shook herself. “Hanging upside down is fine for bats, but not for me. Later.” She let go of her perch and swooped out into the hall. The snowman turned to watch her go.
    “You’re driving them off, young man.” I patted Stennie on the head. “Come on now, be nice.”
    “Nice makes me puke.”
    “You do have a bit of an edge tonight.” I had trouble imagining this dainty little brat as my best friend. “Better watch out you don’t cut someone.”
    The dog skeleton came to the doorway and called up to us. “We’re supposed to dance now.”
    “About time.” Stennie fell off the ceiling like a drop of water and splashed headfirst onto the beige Persian rug. His image went all muddy for a moment and then he re-formed, upright and unharmed. “Going to skitter, tin man?”
    “I need to talk to you for a moment,” the snowman murmured.
    “You need to?” I said.
    “Dance, dance, dance,” sang Stennie. “Later.” He swerved after the skeleton out of the room.
    The snowman said, “It’s about a possible theft of information.”
    Right then was when I should have slammed it into reverse. Caught up with Stennie or maybe faded from Playroom altogether. But all I did was raise my hands over my head. “You got me, snowman; I confess. But society is to blame, too, isn’t it? You will tell the judge to go easy on me? I’ve had a tough life.”
    “This is serious.”
    “You’re Weldon—what’s your name?” Down the hall, I could hear the thud of Warhead’s bass line. “Montross.”
    “I’ll come to the point, Peter.” The only acknowledgment he made was to drop the kid voice. “The firm I represent provides information security services. Last week someone operated on the protected database of one of our clients. We have reason to believe that a certified photograph was accessed and copied. What can you tell me about this?”
    “Not bad, Mr. Montross, sir. But if you were as good as you think you are, you’d know my name isn’t Peter. It’s Mr. Boy. And since nobody invited you to this party, maybe you’d better tell me now why I shouldn’t just go ahead and have you deleted?”
    “I know that you were undergoing genetic therapy at the time of the theft, so you could not have been directly responsible. That’s in your favor. However, I also know that you can help me clear this matter up. And you need to do that, son, just as quickly as you can. Otherwise there’s big trouble coming.”
    “What are you going to do, tell my mommy?” My blood started to pump; I was coming back to life.
    “This is my offer. It’s not negotiable. You let me sweep your files for this image. You turn over any hard copies you’ve made, and you instruct your wiseguy to