Cyberpunk

reshaped just after I was born. When I was little I used to think of her as a magic princess glowing with fairy light. Later I pictured her as one or another of my friends’ moms, only better dressed. After I had started getting twanked, I was afraid she might be just a brain floating in nutrient solution, like in some pricey memory bank. All wrong.
    The interior of the head was dark and absolutely freezing.
    There was no sound except for the hum of refrigeration units. “Mom?” My voice echoed in the empty space. I stumbled and caught myself against a smooth wall. Not skin, like everywhere else in Mom—metal. The tears froze on my face.
    “There’s nothing for you here,” she said. “This is a clean room. You’re compromising it. You must leave immediately.”
    Sterile environment, metal walls, the bitter cold that superconductors needed. I did not need to see. No one lived here. It had never occurred to me that there was no Mom to touch. She had downloaded, become an electron ghost tripping icy logic gates. “How long have you been dead?”
    “This isn’t where you belong,” she said.
    I shivered. “How long?”
    “Go away,” she said.
    So I did. I had to. I could not stay very long in her secret place, or I would die of the cold.
    As I reeled down the stairs, Mom herself seemed to shift beneath my feet and I saw her as if she were a stranger. Dead—and I had been living in a tomb. I ran past Nanny; she still sprawled where I had left her. All those years I had loved her, I had been in love with death. Mom had been sucking life from me the way her refrigerators stole the warmth from my body.
    Now I knew there was no way I could stay, no matter what anyone said. I knew it was not going to be easy leaving, and not just because of the money. For a long time Mom had been my entire world. But I could not let her use me to pretend she was alive, or I would end up like her.
    I realized now that the door had always stayed locked because Mom had to hide what she had become. If I wanted, I could have destroyed her. Downloaded intelligences have no more rights than cars or wiseguys. Mom was legally dead and I was her only heir. I could have had her shut off, her body razed. But somehow it was enough to go, to walk away from my inheritance. I was scared, and yet with every step I felt lighter. Happier. Extremely free.
    I had not expected to find Tree waiting at the doorbone, chatting with Comrade as if nothing had happened. “I just had to see if you were really the biggest fool in the world,” she said.
    “Out.” I pulled her through the door. “Before I change my mind.”
    Comrade started to follow us. “No, not you.” I turned and stared back at the heads on his window coat. I had not intended to see him again; I had wanted to be gone before Montross returned him. “Look, I’m giving you back to Mom. She needs you more than I do.”
    If he had argued, I might have given in. The old unregulated Comrade would have said something. But he just slumped a little and nodded and I knew that he was dead, too. The thing in front of me was another ghost. He and Mom were two of a kind. “Pretend you’re her kid, maybe she’ll like that.” I patted his shoulder.
    “ Prekrassnaya ideya ,” he said. “ Spaceba .”
    “You’re welcome,” I said. Tree and I trotted together down the long driveway. Robot sentries crossed the lawn and turned their spotlights on us. I wanted to tell her she was right. I had probably just done the single most irresponsible thing of my life—and I had high standards. Still, I could not imagine how being poor could be worse than being rich and hating yourself. I had seen enough of what it was like to be dead. It was time to try living. “Are we going someplace, Mr. Boy?” Tree squeezed my hand. “Or are we just wandering around in the dark?”
    “Mr. Boy is a damn stupid name, don’t you think?” I laughed. “Call me Pete.” I felt like a kid again.

WOLVES OF THE PLATEAU

----
    By John Shirley

    Nine A.M. , and Jerome-X wanted a smoke. He didn’t smoke, but he wanted one in here, and he could see how people went into prison non-smokers and came out doing two packs a day. Maybe had to get their brains rewired to get off it. Which was ugly, he’d been rewired once to get off Sink, synthetic cocaine, and he’d felt like a processor with a glitch for a month after that.
    He pictured his thoughts like a little train, zipping around the cigarette-burnt graffiti: “YOU