Cyberpunk, BDSM
Date Published: September 27, 2024
In the 23rd century you can jack into the web, shop at a mall floating half
a mile above the street, kill yourself with the drug of the week, and wake
up in a new body.
The rich can have what they want — and they want immortality. What they
get is gHost, generic Host Somnambulant Transfer. The dead become
re-animated hosts for the living. The trade is controlled by megacorps and
is highly regulated. Getting on the list is the perk for any corporate
ladder-climber. But the price is steep.
Brady Woods is a smart-ass hacker fighting to survive in the dim streets at
the bottom of the canyons between two-hundred-story buildings, where smog
and anti-grav shopping malls block out the sun and predators prowl the
shadowed alleys.
Brady has talent. He can fix anything. And he can surf the web like no one
can. Code is his junk food; blind killers and security bots are his nemeses;
information is his currency and his rush.
Sleen’s girl Deel has eyes for Brady; a battered cat knows its own. Brady
knows what he wants, and he wants Deel. Problem. Sleen thinks he owns Deel,
and he’s not about to give her up. In a barter economy Deel’s up for grabs
— for the right price. But can she be trusted? And how far will Brady go to
make her his own?
EXCERPT
Following Brady as they shouldered through the crowd in the free market at
Temple Square, Jongo asked, “That guy from gHost been around
again?”
“Yeah,” said Brady absently.
Free market hawkers shouted lies and the booths were generally full of
crap, but you could get warm beer and stale burgers for a decent price. If
you had a job. Large people with long arms and heavy truncheons roamed the
crowd. A few stood by jewelry booths and the like, vendors who could afford
the service and needed it.
They headed for the Sky Mall at Nineteenth and Ash. Gravs slid through the
canyons in a solid stream. The sun, where it could penetrate through the
maze of skybridges, the sludge of traffic, the vertical walls of the
superscrapers, and the thick drizzle-fog from the grav exhausts, fell
faintly on the Certified Organic PermGrass. You could roll a P-5 battle tank
over that stuff and every blade would spring right back.
At ground level, most of downtown was a meandering park, with low-light
trees and flower gardens and wandering paths to soften the atmosphere of
crumbling, graffiti covered tenements. Best thing about living here, if you
ignored the fact that it looked like nineteenth century London at midnight,
about which Brady was fairly certain Jongo didn’t have a clue.
“You jacked in again?” asked Jongo, looking askance. Like most
humans, Jongo practically lived to surf, but jacking scared him.
“You’re the only person I ever heard of can jack without an
implant.”
Brady thought Jongo sounded less envious than self pitying. Ordinary
mortals needed an implant and a steady supply of nauseating drugs to make
the necessary mental connection for real jacking.
The reward was the ability to be in the net, to swim with the sharks. The
sort of thing high level corporate IT commandos got paid to do. The downside
for plebes was two days retching your guts out when you checked back in from
the ride. The corporate guys got the good stuff, no withdrawal, but the
brain strain still sent three in ten to the psych ward.
Apparently I’m either immune or already insane.
Deep surfing demanded an out of body experience not compatible with
walking, but Brady could cruise a little.
Ignoring Jongo, Brady chatted with Beezo, who Brady actually knew
personally. Tall angular guy with shadowed eyes who spoke with deceptive
softness and had no known address, or, for that matter, any obvious means of
support. Beezo did mutter occasionally about overthrowing the establishment,
whatever that meant, and was known to drive his environmentally devastating
grav at speeds approaching escape velocity.
Beezo had planned one of his legendary, online/real-time parties, where
he’d take over an entire lower level floor somewhere, spend thousands
painting and decorating, invite three hundred total strangers, and provide
food, beverages and drugs. Entertainment developed through spontaneous
combustion.
Beezo mixed with a different crowd. Brady’d seen a society column online
that had a picture of a big deal party out in the Hamptons and fuck if Beezo
hadn’t been in it. No explanation for that one but Brady always figured
Beezo was some rich family’s black sheep. Black demon sounds closer to
it.
Brady had no idea where Beezo got the money, although the black demon
analogy looked better all the time. There was always serious female talent,
which appeared to be Beezo’s primary interest, but just as frequently the
parties attracted unwelcome legal attention, especially when someone
inevitably jacked in and tried to crack a corporate firewall.
“You in?” Beezo asked by non-video voice link, meaning he was
probably in a session with one or more girls. Brady could never tell
anything by voice alone. Beezo seemed to have Herculean self-control.
Brady had no interest in Beezo’s money or his drugs and he didn’t want to
take a chance on getting arrested, but before he could play the Elena card,
Beezo said, “I can have two good people over there to look after
Elena.”
Brady trusted Beezo that way. “You’re reading my mind. Thanks, but let
me think about it.”
“Way on.” Beezo blinked out.
Beezo had no issue with Brady’s noncommittal attitude, which Brady
understood put him fairly high up the ladder of people Beezo liked. He liked
Beezo in turn, but the party scene had soured for him before it started, in
view of his current situation.
Freddy Lake pinged him, wanting to know who could reverse engineer a
certain program that might perhaps be used to bypass the security system for
a minor third world bank. If one were so inclined.
Brady dropped that one like a dirty bomb, referring Freddy to a vague
acquaintance who had less regard for his own skin. Brady had helped Freddy
out a few years ago with a similar technical issue, before he understood
that Freddy’s profession involved personal intrusion into other people’s
private property.
Rumor had Freddy living in a penthouse in Paris half the year, and an
absolute zero mud hut on Frendel II out at the edge of the galaxy the other
half. No one had any idea what Freddy looked like or where he actually
lived. Brady figured he was a corporate AI construct, built to distract the
masses from their prosaic woes when they weren’t high on the drug of the
week.
Hive flitted by, waving. She used a porn star avatar, totally nude and
rendered in erotically charged detail. Hive liked bondage and D/s, which
request Brady had occasionally obliged, although digital orgasms didn’t do
much for him.
If she actually jacked in we could trade sensory overlays. The idea
appealed on a purely visceral level. But she wasn’t having any, hangover
aside. Sensory overlays were way too intimate for people who spent the
majority of their lives connected to the net.
A corporate cruiser swerved around a corner, riding low and slow, clearly
on the hunt. Amber beams cut through the mist. Jongo stiffened and Brady
knew he had Benedrene or Malzene on him again. The Legacy Corp decal shone
bright yellow on the door of the cruiser. They both breathed out as the long
blue shark glided off in search of other prey.
“Their CFO got iced a couple of days ago,” muttered Brady by way
of explanation, not that Jongo cared. “Probably Freeman Enterprises. I
heard they were making a move on the North Jupiter mines. The guy who got it
was jacked in at the time. Everybody’s saying it was an inside job. Someone
shorted his connection. Their whole online system collapsed, shut down the
entire Jupiter operation for six days. Cost them a bundle.”
Jongo screwed up his face. “Say what?”
“Nothing.” Brady scowled.
Jongo grimaced. “Unassisted Jacking kills more people than smoking,
Brady. Why the hell do you do it? And how do you do it without
drugs?”
“How do you know I don’t use?” muttered Brady,
concentrating.
Jongo waved his hand. “Shit, man, you won’t even blow a Wad. Besides,
I heard it from the dealers… I mean, you know, people talk. They say you
don’t use. Think you’re a loser.” Then, “So why do you do it all
the time, anyway? Jacking, I mean. You practically live there.”
They stopped at Louie’s Floating Food Kart. Jongo got a bowl of nut soup.
Brady bought a soy burger.
“Just curious,” Brady mumbled in reply as he wolfed down the
tasteless, dripping mess.
“You’re always curious,” Jongo muttered.
Brady knew Jongo really didn’t care.
“So what about the gHost guy?” Jongo asked between crunches.
“You think he’ll buy it?”
Brady shrugged as if he didn’t much care, either. “The holo’s pretty
good. I jigged the program from a server uptown, jumped six links to do
it.”
Jongo scowled again like he thought that was crap. Even though he didn’t
say anything, Brady knew he was secretly awestruck. It didn’t take much to
impress Jongo. “Yeah, I wondered what the three alarm was all about
last night.”
Brady snorted at Jongo’s attempt to sound like he understood one word of
what Brady had said. “That was the Legacy whorehouse. I mean Sexual
Therapy Clinic. Somebody torched the place. The Moral Mafia is taking
credit.” Brady shook his head in admiration. “Good old thermite.
Nobody’s used that since the War.”
He’d have done it himself, but he had a strong suspicion somebody like
Beezo had beat him to it. Or Freddy Lake, although Freddy was strongly
rumored to have no ideology that did not involve money.
Only five years late, he thought.
“Shit, that’s where your mom died, right? You glad it’s
gone?”
“It’s not gone, just well scorched. Pretty hard to burn honeycrete and
kelvic rebar. Somebody called in an alarm and they evacuated, ran the
sniffers and found nothing, then they’re walking back in and the place goes
up. Security got some singed eyebrows is all.” He smiled. Thanks,
whoever.
They walked on, heading for the mall. Jongo wanted to look at stuff he
couldn’t buy. Brady went along for no particular reason. To get out for a
while.
Brady saw Sleen and four of his ass lickers. Two were sizeable males of the
species, Nix and Jawbone. Brady suspected they shared a single digit IQ but
wasn’t prepared to bet it was that high. The other two were females, one
thin, the other not, neither of whom he knew.
Not-Thin-girl wasn’t actually fat, being built more along the lines of a
Roman Centurion, clad in retro-leather with fake metal patches that carried
the Roman analogy even further. Her dark hair stood out in horizontal spikes
and she had a razor chain wrapped around her left forearm. Brady thought she
could probably run the hundred meters in ten flat with one of him under each
arm. That and her possessive stance near the other girl tagged her as
mistress or owner.
Following his brief cataloguing of the Centurion, Brady shifted his gaze
and immediately forgot her.
Thin girl looked to be about a meter fifty if she stood straighter than she
now did, might weigh forty-five kilos if she ate something. But thin is
relative. Next to the Centurion she looked like a rod, but under her
gray-black second-skin, which looked like it had been sprayed on, because it
had, her ass looked firm and round and her tits stood out like melons, with
spectacular nipples.
Her white-blonde hair had been buzzed. She had light chocolate skin and
wore no makeup, which was clearly not an issue given her physical
attributes. If she had been healthier her sharp face would have been elfin
and intelligent instead of gaunt and flat-eyed.
She stood behind the others. Probably the group whore, but Brady didn’t
judge her. Neither, apparently, did Jongo, whose eyes clearly wished they
were hands.
Sleen wore a jacket that appeared to be made from multi-hued feathers. A
holographic tattoo on his bald head changed color and shape constantly,
depending on his mood. Just now it was a snake swallowing a mouse. Brady
watched the shimmering coils slither around the side of Sleen’s head.
Sleen saw Jongo’s look. He casually backhanded the girl, who turned her
face away with practiced quickness and took the blow on her temple as she
crumpled to the ground.
No one moved, including Brady. Sleen clamped one huge hand on Jongo’s neck,
squeezing lightly and making Jongo’s eyes bulge.
“Forget about her, shitbird. She ain’t for sale or rent and you got
other business right now.”
About the Author
By day, Jonathan Wright disguises himself as a retired insurance
underwriter. His family believe him to be supremely cool, though slightly
deranged. In pursuit of his career as a horror/romance/comedy writer, Jon
strives to expand his experiences, in order to relate them to his readers
with authenticity. Skulking through everyday life is not enough for Jon, no,
he pushes the envelope (and everyone’s buttons). He calls this
“research.”
The cats, who have unique and appropriate names, but do not answer to them,
and are therefore both known simply as “Cat,” could care less. His
daughter generally forgives him, as long as he remembers to take out the
trash and put the toilet seat down.
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok:
@changelingpress
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