Cyberpunk by Bruce Bethke Read Free Book Online Page A

know what you’re trying to pull—”
    “I’m not trying anything. It’s done already.”
    Mom came padding tentative up the stairs and asked, soft, “What’s
    going on, honey?”
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    “Shut up, Sherri.” His voice dropped down to a strained
    normal/quiet. “What did you do, Mikhail?”
    “Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you.”
    “You mean, you got into the bank computer and erased my checking
    account?”
    “Savings and mortgage on the house, too.”
    “Oh my God ... “
    Mom said, “He’s just angry, David. Give him time to cool off.
    Mikey, you wouldn’t really do that to us, would you?”
    “Then I accessed Fuji-DynaRand,” I said. “Wiped your job. Your
    pension. I got into your plastic, too.”
    “He couldn’t have, David. Could he?”
    “ Mikhail! ” He hit the door. I jumped back; I’d definitely heard wood
    splinter around the lock. “I am going to wring your scrawny neck !”
    “Wait!” I shouted back. “I copied all your files before I purged!
    There is a way to recover!”
    He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. “Give
    me the copies right now and I’ll just forget that this ever happened.”
    “I can’t. I mean, I did backups into other systems. And I encrypted
    the files and hid them where only I know how to access.”
    There was quiet. No, in a nano I realized it wasn’t quiet, it was Mom
    and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the door but all I caught was
    Mom saying ‘why not?’ and Dad saying, ‘but what if he is telling the
    truth?’
    “Okay, Mikhail,” Dad said at last, “what do you want?”
    I locked up. It was an embarasser; what did I want? I hadn’t thought
    that far ahead. Me, caught without a program! I dropped half a laugh,
    then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get me I
    couldn’t get myself, or with Rayno’s help. Rayno! I wanted to get in
    touch with him, is what I wanted. I’d pulled this whole thing off without
    Rayno!
    I decided then it’d probably be better if my Dad didn’t know about
    the Starfire, so I told him the first thing I wanted was my Miko-Gyoja
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    back. It took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get
    it. He stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I’d really purged
    him.
    He was real subdued when he brought MoJo back up.
    I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn’t come up
    with anything more than I wanted them to leave me alone and stop
    telling me what to do. I got MoJo back into my room without being
    pulped, locked the door, and got my system more or less back together.
    Then I booted up, got on line, and gave Dad his job back.
    Next I tried to log into OurNet, but Georgie’s old man had taken the
    no-style approach to shutting us down. The line was radio silence dead.
    Fine. There were other bulletin boards we sometimes used. I left
    flags and messages all over the place for Rayno and Georgie to call me,
    then stayed up half the night playing the Battle of Peshawar just to make
    sure Dad didn’t try anything. My mind wasn’t on the game, though. The
    towelheads were winning this time, so I had to withdraw my surviving
    T-72s and nuke the city.
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    Chapter 0/ 5
    “...mmmmf mmm mmmumble mumble mmf. -- crackle — mumble
    oh-seven-hundred — pssht — and you are go for throttle up .”
    Dim, slow, somewhere back in the vacant gray chasms of my
    mindspace, I flagged it was morning. That, and I’d had a rough night:
    wasn’t sure quite how , though. The memories were swimming around all
    vague and elusive like ornamental crystal cybercarp in a black garden
    pond. Every now and then one got near the surface and I caught the
    murky flash of light off green glass scales...
    Oh yeah, that’s right. I remembered now. It was the giant radioactive
    spiders again. The mutant tarantulas of Arachnus had