Cyberpunk

particle intent. Learning. Preparing.
    I stared at the screen, which showed the library logo and the welcome menu, all options grayed out, and cursed Lorelei and myself. Mostly myself. After an hour of pretending to work, I slipped away.
    Another hour later, Grizz found me outside smoking. Good timing, too. I was on my fourth bummed cigarette, and starting to wonder when a guard would show to jolly me along on my way.
    She looked happy, as animated as Grizz gets, which isn’t much.
    “You get what you wanted?” I asked.
    “Got a bunch of stuff,” she said. “Plant stuff.”
    Grizz likes plants, I know. At the shelter, she tended the windowsills full of discarded cacti and spider plants. But I hadn’t known she was thinking about that for a career.
    “That memory’s something, isn’t it?” she said. “I downloaded a weather predictor that monitors the whole planet, some biology databases, some specialized ones, some basic gardening routines, and a lot of stuff on orchids.”
    “Orchids?”
    “I’ve always liked orchids. I’ve still got plenty of room, too. What about you?”
    “Mine’s not so good,” I lied. “It didn’t hold much at all.”
    Her gaze flickered up to mine, touched with worry. Her eyes narrowed.
    “What are you on?” she asked. “Your pupils are big as my fist.”
    “Dunno the name.”
    “Where’d you score it?”
    “Lorelei swung by, turned me on.”
    Silence settled between us like a curtain as Grizz’s expression flattened.
    “It’s not like that,” I finally said, unable to bear the lack of talk.
    “Not like what?”
    “She just came through and glimpsed me.”
    “She knew you would be here because we mentioned it at dinner. She still wants you back.”
    “Grizz, I haven’t been with her for two years. Give it a rest.”
    “I will. But she won’t.” She pulled away and made for the exit, her lips pressed together and grim. I followed at a distance all forty blocks to Ajah’s.
    • • •

    In the morning, we showered together to avoid slamming Ajah’s water bill too hard. Grizz kept her eyes turned away from mine, rubbing shampoo into her hair.
    I ran my fingertips along the spirals on her back. “This is different,” I said. Under my fingertips, the wire had knobbed up and thickened, although it still gave easily with the shift of muscles in her back. The gray patches were gone, and a uniform sheen played across the surface.
    “Does it feel different?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Not really.”
    “Do you remember the brand name on the boxes? We could look it up on the Net later on.”
    “Carpa-something. I don’t know. It looked bleeding edge and you never know what’s up with that.”
    “Why do you think they threw it out?” I wanted to keep her talking to me.
    She turned to face me with a mute shrug, closing her eyes and tilting her head back to let the water run over her long black hair. Her delicate eyebrows were like pen strokes capping the swell of her eyes beneath the thin-veined lids.
    I tangled my fingers in her hair, helping free it so the water would wash away all the shampoo. Muddy green eyes opened to regard me.
    “Going to sit out the exams?” she asked.
    Saying nothing, I shook my head. We both knew I didn’t have a chance.
    The Exams were the freak show I expected. Rich people buy mods and make them unnoticeable, plant them in a gut or hollow out a leg. This level, people want to make sure you know what they got. Wal-Mart memory spikes blossomed like cartoon hair from one girl’s scalp, colored sunshine yellow, but most had chosen bracelets, jelly purple and red, covering their forearms. One kid had scales, but they looked like a home job, and judging from the way he worried at them with his fingernails, they felt like it too.
    You take the Exams at sixteen and most of the time they tell you you’re the dregs, just like everyone else, but sometimes your mods and someone’s listing match up and you find yourself with a chance. The more mods you have, the more likely it is. So the kids with parents who can afford to hop them up with database links or bio-mods that let them do something specialized, they’re the ones getting the jobs.
    Usually your family’s there to wish you luck. Mine wasn’t, of course. And Grizz never said anything about her home life. The only times I’ve asked, she shut me down quick. Which makes me think it was bad, real bad, because Grizz doesn’t pull punches.
    You could tell who expected to make