Cyberpunk

herself. Using her long purple nails, she reached up and pried loose a flap of skin behind her ear, plucked out her chip. She wet it, adjusted its feed mode, put it back in, tapping it with the activation mouse under a nail. She pressed the flap shut. Her eyes glazed as she adjusted. She could get high on the chip-impulses for maybe twenty-four hours and then it’d kill her. She’d have to go cold turkey or die. Or get out. And maybe she’d been doing it for a while now . . .
    None of them would be allowed to post bail. They’d each get the two years mandatory minimum sentence. Illegal augs, the feds thought, were getting out of hand. Black-market chip implants were good for playing havoc with the state database lottery; used by bookies of all kinds; used to keep accounts where the IRS couldn’t find them unless they cornered you physically and broke your code; the aug chips were used to out-think banking computers, and for spiking cash machines; used to milk the body, prod the brain into authorizing the secretion of betaendorphins and ACTH and adrenaline and testosterone and other biochemical toys; used to figure the odds at casinos; used to compute the specs for homemade designer drugs; used by the mob’s street dons to play strategy and tactics; used by the kid gangs for the same reasons; used for illegal congregations on the Plateau.
    It was the Plateau, Jerome thought, that really scared the shit out of the feds. It had possibilities.
    It was way beyond the fucking Internet; it was past the Deep Internet; it was even beyond the Grid.
    The trashcan dragged in a cot for the extra man, shoved it folded under the door, and blared, “Lights out, all inmates are required to be i-i-in their buunks-s-s . . .” Its voice was failing.
    After the trashcan and the light had gone, they climbed off their bunks and sat hunkered in a circle on the floor.
    They were on chips, but not transmission-linked to one another. Jacked-up on the chips, they communicated in a spoken shorthand.
    “Bull,” Bones was saying. “Door.” He was a voice in the darkness; a scarecrow of shadow.
    “Time,” Jessie said.
    “Compatibility? Know?” Eddie said.
    Jerome said, “Noshee!” Snorts of laughter from the others.
    “Link check,” Bones said.
    “Models?” Jessie said.
    Then they joined in an incantation of numbers.
    It was a fifteen-minute conversation in less than a minute.
    Translated, the foregoing conversation went: “It’s bullshit, you get past the trashcan, there’s human guards, you can’t reprogram them.”
    “But at certain hours,” Jessie told him, “there’s only one on duty. They’re used to seeing the can bring people in and out. They won’t question it till they try to confirm it. By then we’ll be on their ass.”
    “We might not be compatible,” Eddie had pointed out. “You understand, compatible?”
    “Oh, hey, man, I think we can comprehend that,” Jerome said, making the others snort with laughter. Eddie wasn’t liked much.
    Then Bones had said, “The only way to see if we’re compatible is to do a systems link. We got the links, we got the thinks, like the man says. It’s either the chain that holds us in, or it’s the chain that pulls us out.”
    Jerome’s scalp tightened. A systems link. A mini-Plateau. Sharing minds. Brutal intimacy. Maybe some fallout from the Plateau. He wasn’t ready for it.
    If it went sour, he could get time tacked onto his sentence for attempted jailbreak. And somebody might get dusted. They might have to kill a human guard. Jerome had once punched a dealer in the nose, and the spurt of blood had made him sick. He couldn’t kill anyone. But . . . he had shit for alternatives. He knew he wouldn’t make it through two years anyway, when they sent him up to the Big One.
    The Big One’d grind him up for sure. They’d find his chip there, and it’d piss them off. They’d let the bulls rape him and give him the New Virus; he’d flip out from being locked in and chipless, and they’d put him under Aversion Rehab and burn him out.
    Jerome savaged a thumbnail with his incisors. Sent to the Big One .
    He’d been trying not to think about it. Making himself take it one day at a time. But now he had to look at the alternatives. His stomach twisted itself to punish him for being so stupid. For getting into dealing augments so he could finance a big transer. Why? A transer didn’t get him anything but his face pirated onto local TV for maybe twenty seconds.