The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy by Gary Ballard Read Free Book Online Page A

shot. They both looked drunk in the picture, Angela’s seedy blonde hair matted with sweat, her skin shiny from the exertions of dancing and running from house to house. Angela wasn’t what most would call beautiful. So much time in the crèche had turned her average looks into something else entirely, skin pale and yellowed, eyes a little too sunken. She had put on makeup that night, though, and to Bridge, she had been about as pretty as a girl could get. He had drunk a great deal that night, and his memories might have beer goggles. Even after all the bitterness and fighting, she was still beautiful to his eyes.
    Bridge set aside the memory with only a little pang and steeled himself for the coming conversation. It never went well, even when both agreed amicably on the business at hand. There would be cutting remarks, remarks that often led to retreading old arguments if either was in a mood. ‘Just get the business done,’ he told himself. He sat next to the neglected crèche.
    The pill-shaped device, used to connect to the GlobalNet in the most visceral way possible, was covered in a thin shroud of dust, dulling the normally shiny surface. He ran a finger through the dust, letting out an exasperated sigh as he rubbed the greasy film between his thumb and forefinger. Proximity to the device tempted him, a muted siren’s call to undress, open the coffin-like lid and climb into the lukewarm saline solution, to plug his interface jack in, sheathe his genitals in the waste catch and sink down into the glorious rush of jacking in. He missed the freefall adrenaline of consciousness translated into pure data, of his body rendered in liquid mercury, shifting and changing with his every thought. He missed the thrill of cracking databank security, of running from anti-intrusion software and other hackers.
    But those days were done. He bent over and opened the panel on the bottom of the crèche for remote access. Bridge pulled the interface plug out, dragging it back to the interface jack on the back of his neck and plugged in.
    Remote access to the GlobalNet was nothing like crèche work. There was still the rush of dissolution, the feeling of consciousness dis doiousnesintegrating and then the re-emergence of sensory perceptions as Bridge’s netbody rezzed into the crèche’s entry room. But compared to crèche work, his NetBody was mired in mud, a sloppy, dragging sensation of lethargy encapsulating his actions. Sensory input that was normally sharper than real life was dull and uninteresting with remote access. It made him miss crèche work that much more.
    Putting aside his desire, Bridge surveyed his entry room. Decorated with a baroque theme, like an 18th century Parisian ballroom, it gave Bridge a surge of pride. He had done all the texture work himself. Unfortunately, the textures were at least a generation behind what the latest crèche’s could handle, and to his critical eye, the whole room now felt outdated. But it wasn’t as if he entertained there anymore. He sat down in a lush, almost throne-like chair and accessed the room’s external communications menu, sending Angela a request for direct entry into one of her chats. Fiddling with a useless puzzle game in a floating window while he waited, he was surprised at how fast the response came. He grabbed hold of the floating key, which dragged him bodily through a hole in the air, depositing him in an elaborately-decorated room in the blink of a virtual eye.
    Angela’s chat rooms always tended towards the fanciful, leaning heavily on a lack of gravity, objects floating by for no apparent reason. She’d always said, “If I want gravity, I’ll go walk around the goddamn park.” Bridge rezzed in upside down, though the concepts of up or down were purely perceptual and ineffective for describing his position relative to the rest of the room. If he had a stomach, it would have turned. His inner eyes adjusted to the whacked out perspective, and he began to examine