Cyberpunk

center is a girl. A woman, I mean.”
    “You’re shitting me,” she said. “A woman ran Google’s data center?”
    “Runs,” Felix said. “It’s still online.”
    “ NFW ,” she said. She let the axe lower.
    “Way. Have you got any cortisone cream? I can tell you the story. My name’s Felix and this is Van, who needs any antihistamines you can spare.”
    “I can spare? Felix old pal, I have enough dope here to last a hundred years. This stuff’s going to expire long before it runs out. But are you telling me that the ’Net’s still up?”
    “It’s still up,” he said. “Kind of. That’s what we’ve been doing all week. Keeping it online. It might not last much longer, though.”
    “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose it would.” She set the axe down. “Have you got anything to trade? I don’t need much, but I’ve been trying to keep my spirits up by trading with the neighbors. It’s like playing civilization.”
    “You have neighbors?”
    “At least ten,” she said. “The people in the restaurant across the way make a pretty good soup, even if most of the veg is canned. They cleaned me out of Sterno, though.”
    “You’ve got neighbors and you trade with them?”
    “Well, nominally. It’d be pretty lonely without them. I’ve taken care of whatever sniffles I could. Set a bone—broken wrist. Listen, do you want some Wonder Bread and peanut butter? I have a ton of it. Your friend looks like he could use a meal.”
    “Yes please,” Van said. “We don’t have anything to trade, but we’re both committed workaholics looking to learn a trade. Could you use some assistants?”
    “Not really.” She spun her axe on its head. “But I wouldn’t mind some company.”
    They ate the sandwiches and then some soup. The restaurant people brought it over and made their manners at them, though Felix saw their noses wrinkle up and ascertained that there was working plumbing in the back room. Van went in to take a sponge bath and then he followed.
    “None of us know what to do,” the woman said. Her name was Rosa, and she had found them a bottle of wine and some disposable plastic cups from the housewares aisle. “I thought we’d have helicopters or tanks or even looters, but it’s just quiet.”
    “You seem to have kept pretty quiet yourself,” Felix said.
    “Didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
    “You ever think that maybe there’s a lot of people out there doing the same thing? Maybe if we all get together we’ll come up with something to do.”
    “Or maybe they’ll cut our throats,” she said.
    Van nodded. “She’s got a point.”
    Felix was on his feet. “No way, we can’t think like that. Lady, we’re at a critical juncture here. We can go down through negligence, dwindling away in our hiding holes, or we can try to build something better.”
    “Better?” She made a rude noise.
    “Okay, not better. Something though. Building something new is better than letting it dwindle away. Christ, what are you going to do when you’ve read all the magazines and eaten all the potato chips here?”
    Rosa shook her head. “Pretty talk,” she said. “But what the hell are we going to do, anyway?”
    “Something,” Felix said. “We’re going to do something. Something is better than nothing. We’re going to take this patch of the world where people are talking to each other, and we’re going to expand it. We’re going to find everyone we can and we’re going to take care of them and they’re going to take care of us. We’ll probably fuck it up. We’ll probably fail. I’d rather fail than give up, though.”
    Van laughed. “Felix, you are crazier than Sario, you know it?”
    “We’re going to go and drag him out, first thing tomorrow. He’s going to be a part of this, too. Everyone will. Screw the end of the world. The world doesn’t end. Humans aren’t the kind of things that have endings.”
    Rosa shook her head again, but she was smiling a little now. “And you’ll be what, the Pope-Emperor of the World?”
    “He prefers Prime Minister,” Van said in a stagey whisper. The antihistamines had worked miracles on his skin, and it had faded from angry red to a fine pink.
    “You want to be Minister of Health, Rosa?” he said.
    “Boys,” she said. “Playing games. Howa bout this. I’ll help out however I can provided you never ask me to call you Prime Minister and you never call me the Minister of Health?”
    “It’s a deal, he