The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy by Gary Ballard Read Free Book Online

relationship, just Netsex for the first few months before they ever met in the flesh. The first skin meet had ended in bed, where they stayed for a whole weekend, never even touching the crèche. Two months of that had them moving into this place together as an official couple. They were a formidable tandem on the GlobalNet, in a field dominated by solo acts. Life had been good, until the riots.
    The 2027 food riots had started in mid-summer, egged on by the massive heat wave and the callous indifference of the federal budget crisis. When federal aid to the states disappeared, welfare food shipments disappeared and poor people starved. First, there was looting, then wholesale ransacking of government facilities and then it got really nasty. Police stations, already undermanned by those officers who wouldn’t strike, were assaulted by well-organized mobs. Bridge and Angela hadn’t given too shits, watching the news coverage of the violence from the safety of the crèche with bemused cynicism. So long as someone would brave the violence to deliver a pizza and their Net connection held up, he and Angela could have lasted indefinitely.
    Once the mobs started taking down local switches and power grids because there was little else to destroy, the couple were forced into the open. Rather than watching dispassionately, they had to brave the mobs just to find food. Those two days had been an eternity, but seeing up close the gibbering screams of human beings dropped to the level of animal violence he’d never witnessed before had broken his spirit in ways he never expected. When the corporations stepped in to quell the riots, Bridge swore off the crèche completely. He wanted nothing more to do with that make-believe world of bits and bytes. Much to his surprise, the riots had unearthed an alarming penchant for manipulating all the worst desires of humanity to get what he needed. Rather than steal information, he found much more pleasure in aiding sleazy fuckers get together in some macabre dance of self-immolation, feeding their secret hungers for immorality while keeping himself distanced from the cesspool.
    Angela did not take the abrupt career change well. She was no innocent, since brokering information was highly illegal no matter how many corporations availed themselves of her services.
    But something about the slick persona, the impeccable fashion, and Bridge’s adamant refusal to use a crèche again infuriated her. She retreated to the crèche more than usual, and all too soon they were living separate lives, unable or unwilling toeedunwilli cross the divide between them. Finally, she moved out, taking her crèche and what little physical property she still owned. Their mutual friends, the ones who would still talk to Bridge after the breakup, would tell him about her personal life every so often, whether he wanted to hear it or not. Though she had become a physical recluse and shunned most human contact, it hadn’t stopped her from shacking up with some hacker who lived in Seoul. But she was still a great contact for Bridge, someone who could provide hackers like the one he needed now. Angela still trusted Bridge, at least as far as she trusted anyone in her business.
    Bridge walked into the bedroom and past the night stand where the last picture they’d taken sat. He picked it up and stared at it forlornly for a moment, thinking of the day the picture had been taken. Before the riots, they’d gone to a New Year’s Eve party in Boyle Heights. The hacker gang Los Magos rented a string of houses in the neighborhood, and they’d hosted their own block party. Bridge remembered that some poser hacker, Dark-something or other, had insisted that everyone at the party get a photo for some GlobalNet slideshow museum room. The guy got whacked soon after, so the slideshow was never built, but Bridge finagled a download and put it by their bed. Angela had laughed, calling him a soppy sentimental bitch, but Bridge liked the