Cyberpunk

already here then. He piggybacked on with you.” Comrade slapped his leg. “I can’t understand how he beat my security so easily.”
    The roombrain flicked the message indicator. “Stennie’s calling,” it said.
    “Pick up,” I said.
    “Hi, it’s that time again.” Stennie was alone in his car. “I’m on my way over to give you jacks a thrill.” He pushed his triangular snout up to the camera and licked at the lens. “Doing anything?”
    “Not really. Sitting around.”
    “I’ll fix that. Five minutes.” He faded.
    Comrade was staring at nothing.
    “Look, Comrade, you did your best,” I said. “I’m not mad at you.”
    “Too plugging easy.” He shook his head as if I had missed the point.
    “What I don’t understand is why Montross is so cranky anyway. It’s just a picture of meat.”
    “Maybe he’s not really dead.”
    “Sure he is,” I said. “You can’t fake a verification grid.”
    “No, but you can fake a corpse.”
    “You know something?”
    “If I did I wouldn’t tell you,” said Comrade. “You have enough problems already. Like how do we explain this to your mom?”
    “We don’t. Not yet. Let’s wait him out. Sooner or later he’s got to realize that we’re not going to use his picture for anything. I mean, if he’s that nervous, I’ll even give it back. I don’t care anymore. You hear that, Montross, you dumbscut? We’re harmless. Get out of our lives!”
    “It’s more than the picture now,” said Comrade. “It’s me. I found the way in.” He was careful to keep his expression blank.
    I did not know what to say to him. No way Montross would be satisfied erasing only the memory of the operation. He would probably reconnect Comrade’s regulators to bring him back under control. Turn him to pudding. He would be just another wiseguy, like anyone else could own. I was surprised that Comrade did not ask me to promise not to hand him over. Maybe he just assumed I would stand by him.
    We did not hear Stennie coming until he sprang into the room.
    “Have fun or die!” He was clutching a plastic gun in his spindly hand, which he aimed at my head.
    “Stennie, no.”
    He fired as I rolled across the bed. The jellybee buzzed by me and squished against one of the windows. It was a purple, and immediately I smelled the tang of artificial grape flavor. The splatter on the wrinkled wall pulsed and split in two, emitting a second burst of grapeness. The two halves oozed in opposite directions, shivered, and divided again.
    “Fun extremist!” He shot Comrade with a cherry as he dove for the closet. “Dance!”
    I bounced up and down on the bed, timing my move. He fired a green at me that missed. Comrade, meanwhile, gathered himself up as zits of red jellybee squirmed across his window coat. He barreled out of the closet into Stennie, knocking him sideways. I sprang on top of them and wrestled the gun away. Stennie was paralyzed with laughter. I had to giggle too, in part because now I could put off talking to Comrade about Montross.
    By the time we untangled ourselves, the jellybees had faded. “Set for twelve generations before they all die out,” Stennie said as he settled himself on the bed. “So what’s this my car tells me, you’ve been giving free rides? Is this the cush with the name?”
    “None of your business. You never tell me about your cush.”
    “Okay. Her name is Janet Hoyt.”
    “Is it?” He caught me off-guard again. Twice in one day, a record. “Comrade, let’s see this prize.”
    Comrade linked to the roombrain and ran a search. “Got her.” He called Janet Hoyt’s DI file to screen, and her face ballooned across an entire window.
    She was a tanned, blue-eyed blonde with the kind of off-the- shelf looks that med students slapped onto rabbits in genoplasty courses. Nothing on her face said she was different from any other ornamental moron fresh from the OR—not a dimple or a mole, not even a freckle. “You’re ditching me for her?” It took all the imagination of a potato chip to be as pretty as Janet Hoyt. “Stennie, she’s generic.”
    “Now wait a minute,” said Stennie. “If we’re going to play critic, let’s scope your cush, too.”
    Without asking, Comrade put Tree’s DI photo next to Janet’s. I realized he was still mad at me because of her; he was only pretending not to care. “She’s not my cush,” I said, but no one was listening.
    Stennie leered at her for a moment. “She’s a stiff, isn’t she?” he