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| Rynard Benedict |
 Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: About rats and other pushed animals |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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[DISCLAIMER: I try to give a little impression of my character and the world he lives in as well as this is an exercise in writing english prose for myself (big thanks to dict.leo.org). Ryne's world has many things in commen with the world of “Neuromancer”, so please don’t think I created it entirely myself. Also don’t miss the irony, read it with a smile if you want, I also like to play with cliches. And if you like the original as I do, forgive me. I know that this is far from beeing enigmatic like Gibson’s powerful, matchless prose. ]
[Rated M for mature. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.]
About Rats And Other Pushed Animals
Germany, “Blech Stadt”. A crude compound of patched ruins and fragile plate constructions without visible borders, laying on the edge of the fallout zone near a destroyed city, formerly known as Bonn. Right in the middle a little, old house with a cleared out shop in the ground floor in which a burnt out Russian tank was parking.
„Yo, son of a bitch, get your ass up to speed. Tanneberg’s pissed.”
“Eh? Wat te …?”
Headaches. The unbribable sign of reality – I must be awaked. Fading images of a wierd MDMA induced dream full of bright neon lights still in mind I tried to figure out who was talking to me. Big, brown eyes sunken in a heavy skull with a pointy chin, longish curly hair, a monotonous voice – it was Krulle. He sat on my computer desk, smelling of frying fat and cheap Dutch tobacco. He showed a bored smile and asked:
“Had wet dreams?”
I looked down to my crutch and noticed the erection myself. “Fuck you.”
I stood up, nuzzled my hair and hated myself once more for been run away from my parents home. I wasn’t born on the streets of the post-nuclear Bonn, even not near to it. Everyone knew it, everyone had seen it in my eyes instantly. Eyes from Neumann Genetics GmbH, gene patent No. EU-31687-NEUM017a, blue-green like the ocean on a drippy poster, very popular at the time when my parents had decided to have a son. To bad that these eyes had been pretty expensive too, for the rest of my body hadn’t been pretty much left. The Neumanns were quite proud of their gene patents.
At this time in the morning my mom would have had already made a can of coffee. Calling my dad and me for breakfirst with – like I always imagined – a warm smile on her lips, standing in a white kitchen. The smell of fresh bread in the air, the sound of singing birds coming from an open door of a little balcony.
“Fuck you.” I repeated silently. My memories consisted of ten percent wisely selected and verified real events and of ninety percent SimStim commercials for kids. I had no coffee even not instant coffee. The fridge was broken for yonks and I let it closed because I was afraid of what was waiting in there. So no breakfirst once again.
I grapped my clothes from the ground and put them on, one after another. The headaches slowed my motions, I really needed some good, fresh coffee. I felt like I would almost kill somebody for one.
“What’s with Tanneberg?” I asked Krulle. “I gave him everything he wanted. Deal’s done.”
Krulle blinked. “Yo, but you made a copy of that stuff and sold it to someone else too. This stupid fucker made also copies and tried to sell it to other ones who also made copies … got it?”
“Verdammte Scheisse.”
“Jupp. It took only a few days till someone contacted Tanneberg to sell the stuff to him again. This someone is already dead, the street knows ‘cause Tanneberg wants it to know. You may still find one or another piece of that poor bastard down the roads if the rats didn’t already ate it. And I guess it’ll take just one more day till Tanneberg finds the proof that you son of a rotten bitch fucked him really hard. I mean - what the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was broke.” I explained. “All the money I got from Tanneberg went straight into the pockets of Descendra. The same Descendra who sells me the stuff I need to get the jobs done. This crackbrained business doesn’t pay off anymore … every bugger earns money except me.”
“Yo, most bad stories start with an asshole who’s broke. You were so happy when you established the contact to Tanneberg, you had worked damn hard to get his attention. Now he’ll kill you that’s for sure. ” Krulle waved aside and sighed.
I knead my neck and looked for the pack of cigarettes, which I finally found under my left foot. I sat down on the bed again and fumbled carefully a cigarette out of the squashed pack.
“I can explain it to him.” I said. ”A lot of people are interested in the little secrets of the Garage Disco People and a lot of bad jockeys already tried to break the ICE of their internal mainframe. It was impossible to keep all of them out when I was actually going trough the ICE.”
“You forget that Tanneberg was paying you simply for getting it done pro style. No fucking excuses, even if they sound clever. - Especially if they sound clever.”
“Fuck it. Fuck Tanneberg.” I lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.
“I suggest you grab your ass and move out of the impact zone for a while as long as you’re still having some bucks left. Tanneberg’s influence ends where the salt water begins.”
“My english sucks and the most assholes outside germany don’t speak german very well, somebody told me in Russian a while ago.”
“Cool, so can I have your stuff when you’re dead tomorrow?” Krulle put his left hand on the Ono Sendai deck. I loughed at him. “You can’t play DN7 with it, I already removed the built-in OS a long time ago.”
“Whatever. Send me a post card if you’re across the great pond.” |
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| Rynard Benedict |
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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Chapter 2
The first thing I learned when my feet touched the ground of the old Boston Logan Airport was the untold fact that there were only two sorts of europeans for the security service regardless of whatever crazy language these spoke. Privileged ones and unprivileged ones. I was such an idiot who never left europe before, I haven’t had any clue that this was going to be a big matter. While all these Neumanns, Nixdorfs and Ashpools of the world were guided from unreal beautiful stewardesses with a million dollar smile on the ruby colored lips to special airport exits I was going to see the interiour of a cold narrow security cabinet first.
The security guy or gal – I wasn’t sure about the gender first – didn’t give a rats ass about my limited english but as far as I understood he/she was not very pleased about me. I tried to explain over and over again, I showed my forged papers several times (pretty good work by the way, Krulle had been so kind to allow a discount), decided that the gender was female meanwhile and was expecting the worst. The stun baton (the heavy military version) dongled on her hip all the time, promising a world of pain if my answers didn’t satisfy her sooner or later. Right behind her stood some badass professional showcasing a black bullet proofed padded armour, a Colt M4e SOPMOD with all the bells and whistels you could possibly imagine and a subtle nonchalant smile. His eyes were concealed from entire opaque goggles with a tiny red LED in the upper right corner, which was most likely pure understatement. I bet I’d be already dead and arrived in Disneyland before I could even spot a motion.
After a few days of interrogation and waiting in the cabinet, she showed up again, kicked her knee in my crotch, grabbed my face to throw a last sceptical glance on it and then pushed me away.
“If Interpol or I find out you’re a fake you’ll instantly find yourself in a world full of shit.” She told me. “You’re free to go. Welcome in the U.S. Enjoy your fucking stay.”
Yeah, I already did.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know anybody in Boston. Actually I was quite amazed because the most people I knew in the U.S. lived in Boston, more precisely in the sprawl around the city, inmidst the Boston Atlanta Metropolitan Axis. The hatchery of some of the best jockeys you’ll ever find, Cyberspace Mecca. Drug Mecca. Whore Mecca. Illegal Gene Boosted Bio Implant Mecca. What-Ever-You-Want-Mecca. The huge family-size-package version of what I left behind in germany, stacked on pallets. And I felt like shit, like a kid with no bucks in a candy store.
I thought I would know at least a few old contacts, international business partners, and even almost-friends. But the first calls I made were like this:
Me: “Hi, name’s Ryne. Yep, *the* Ryne. I’m in Boston a-t-m … yeah, really. I need to find a place for a few days, perhaps weeks. Could you help me out? Ja, I have bucks.”
Call 1: “What the fuck? (loughter)” *click * ( … )
Call 2: “Yeah, cool. Go visit the Boston Tea Party Museum.” * click * (Thank you, Sir!)
Call 3: “Ryne’s dead, everybody knows.” * click * (melodic voice, obviously on a acid trip)
Call 4: “Yo, get de foock outta foockin’ line yo foockin’ asshole.” * click * (answering machine, a strong foreign accent which reminded me on Finnish)
However, call number five was different. It was JonSixPack_theThird aka whatever real life ID he had, I didn’t got to know him very well, we did a few jobs together in the w3space, but surprisingly he seemed to know me quite well. He sounded actually somewhat concerned and this hit me in some way. I didn’t told him bollocks about “important business”-and-crap instead I told him the plain truth.
He sighed. “If you’d had called me earlier … I can’t help you now but – mh, lemme think about ... gimme a sec, I’ll call Ronda via conference channel … old girl friend of mine … ”
Several blunt beeps followed until I heard a faulty dial tone.
“Yeah?” A dozy female voice with a scratchy undertone.
“Hi, Ronda. This is John. Ryne’s on the line too.”
“I know your voice, hun. Who’s Ryne?”
“Good friend of mine, he’s at the Logan Airport this moment. Could you pick him up and take care of him for a day or two?”
“Jeesh, John. You *know* I don’t care about your fucking people. I’m not a fucking motel.”
“C’mon, Ronda. Ryne’s okay, he’s not like the others. Actually I guess he won’t talk much.”
“Is he mute or something?”
I cleared my throat but kept silent.
John explained: “No, but he’s a german. The best idea would be to place him infront of a good old TV, you still have one, don’t you?”
“Ya, but something’s with the satellite dish, picture’s blocky’n weird.”
“That’s not the dish, hun, several chinese jockeys try to bust a part of the satellite network since two weeks, they’re flooding it with lots of garbage data. Something must have pissed them off and they believe it came from us, like they always do.”
I had to smirk.
“Ya, whatever.” Ronda replied. “But I don’t want have the TV running all day long.”
The ball bounced from one side to the other for several minutes and I was getting the feeling that John and Ronda had already forgotten me. But suddenly Ronda was starting to talk to me.
“Okay, Ryne. John’s an asshole but I hope you aren’t. I’ll drive to the airport now and if I like what I find there I’ll pick it up. Is that okay for you?”
“Ja, okay.” What else.
“So you aren’t mute indeed.” She noticed. “I hate foreign languages, whatever you say, do it in english. Be honest, don’t mumble and everything will be fine.”
“Okay.” An unpleasent feeling cropped up, there was something in her voice I fundamentally disliked.
She hang up. John told me: “This will take a while, Ryne. Be patient. She’ll come. Bilious green Nissan, small and old, with a red fender on the left side.”
“Thanks, man.”
“You’re welcome.” Click.
The next two hours I was trying hard to get rid of the clear and painfull feeling that I was completely lost in a foreign country thousands of kilometers from home. My great escape plan was just the greatest bullshit I’ve ever done in my whole life, it was sheer madness. I couldn’t recognize anymore what I was thinking when I boarded the plane in Frankfurt. The toughts were hammering my mind and I tried to not cry inmidst the public. Fucking MDMA deficit.
After all Ronda showed up in her Nissan. I didn’t knew what the word “bilious” (green) stood for till I saw it. Nevertheless I was quite eased. She wound down the window and asked:
“Ryne? S‘that you?”
“Fuck, yeah!”
She threw a piercing glance at me, appearently looking me over from head to toe.
“Like your eyes.” She said after. “Get in.”
Fuck Neumann Genetics, their patented dippy eyes just saved my ass. |
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| Rynard Benedict |
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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Later we arrived at a building that reminded me pretty much on those they had built for the thousands of refugees after germany had been hit by the war. Around ten floors high and forty apartments wide, made of bare, grey ferroconcrete. At least something that looked familiar to me though it looked like it was already over a hundred years old because of the countless layers of graffiti tags and paintings that covered the concrete on the outside. Several windows were broken and provisional spread with chipboards, posters and adverts from a dozen different magazines, pure garbage and whatelse.
Ronda leaned her head to the left and said: “I believe you germans live in places that has more classy than this but if you prefer the street, its up to you.”
I had to lough hard. “Yeah, I like the rusty Russian tank in my living room. Quite classy I would say.”
“Shit, ‘kay. Forget it. Ivan’s still there?”
I shrugged. “A few. Deserters, lost ones, criminals, the mafia. They destill good wodka though.”
I followed her through narrow corridors full of crap, electronic garbage and I-really-don’t-want-to-know stuff to an unimposing door and suddenly I had this massive I-can’t-believe-this-shit moment again. Gasping for air I braced myself on a wall.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“What about drugs, you have any?”
“Ya – if you have the bucks.”
I nodded.
Still at that day Ronda should blew someone’s head off because he tried to get the drugs without having bucks. It was a poor rastafarian guy, pretty aggressive and upset. Ronda told him, to “be calm, to stay just there” and “I check what I have for you.” A moment later she pulled a nice and handy H&K USP Compact out of nothing and shot him midst the face. Three times.
The epinephrine let the bright and warm lights of the MDMA heaven explode, I saw my own brain blabbering against the wall, and the gun was in the hands of my sociopathic mom. Short after Ronda seemed to have an everlasting conversation with some guy on the phone about the corpse and the problem to get rid of it. It sounded like a bored discussion about a planned vacation: Florida or California Beach? At last the corpse disappeared in a mysterious way. |
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| Rynard Benedict |
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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A few days later in John’s apartment …
I called Krulle via a connection that went over an illegal satellite dispatcher in mexico to a forgotten network relay in japan through rotten cables in russia to europe. JonSixPack_TheThird insisted in doing so, he was quite paranoid like all jockeys were. Although the signal made a long tour across the globe it was surprisingly good – something that John was appereantly proud of.
“You’re okay?” I asked before Krulle did. I had this feeling that Krulle might be in trouble with Tanneberg’s men because of my sudden disappereance.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. Tanneberg’s more gently than I thought, his buddies showed up and were questioning me. I told them you just left europe in whatever direction. They nodded and buggered off again. I guess they’re not about to make a big mess, street’s touchy and nobody likes to know what happens if the fine woven web rips, even not Tanneberg.”
I sighed and was eased. “Great news.”
Krulle continued: “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that he isn’t exceedingly pissed. People talk a lot of shit somehow the whole story went public and Tanneberg’s looking like a stupid bugger now. He may be forced to engage a pro who’s specialty is to find the fucker wherever he hides. Take care, man. Really.”
“Nobody can find me here, trust me.”
“Yeah, how’s Boston, the sprawl? Shit, I wish I could be there like you …”
“Its worse as you ever imaged.”
“Sounds like a cool party.”
“Yeah. - Hey, Krulle. Thank you, man.”
“For what?”
“For just beeing still alive. If you really want – I could try to-”
“No, it’s okay. I know and like my people here. I can’t leave them alone.”
“I see. But-“
“Yeah, yeah – watch your ass, Ryne. Just don’t forget to send me post cards from time to time.”
“I won’t. Halt die Ohren steif.”
He hang up. I rubbed my face.
“Halt dee Orenstive?” asked John slightly smirking. I had spoke in German with Krulle and scratched my head. But before I was able to explain this phrase he had already the answer. He was wearing the up-to-date version of the Ono Sendai Datavision goggles, which were wireless linked with his up-to-date computer deck which again was connected to the w3space aka the grid. Obviously he had cheched the phrase himself already.
“You told him to keep his chin up? He’s in trouble?”
I negated. “Just a phrase. Cool stuff on your nose by the way.”
“Yeah, you germans burn the grid always with slightly outdated equipment though this makes it quite interesting. Do you know that you just saved my ass a year ago? I think I never told you.”
“What?” I blinked. “… And regarding *your* equipment, friend, the hottest stuff you can get is on the streets of Japan. The farer you go west the better the technology.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I know. I get my stuff straight from Chiba City. Luckily I can actually understand Japanese so I don’t even need to install language hacks. But nevertheless you were fucking impressive when you saved me from beeing fried by the black ICE.”
Slowly but surely I was remembering what he was talking about. “You had everything under control, the ICE never knew what hit it.”
“Almost. It tried to trick us – but you saw it. A little unimposing buoy nearby was pinging around, using a very rare even today almost unknown security hole in the quantix kernel interface of that time. I checked the ‘cols later, it had already infiltrated my deck and was going to create a feedback loop in the circuits which had burnt my brain cells into dust. But you saw it, like I said, and kicked it off grid.”
Suddenly I felt an ice cold breath in the neck. “Jeesh – I just thought it was one of those fucking spam bots that interfered our actions and shot a series of standard con-jackers at it which kept its provider busy … goddamnit. Now I understand why my deck went nuts later ...”
We looked at each other like brother in arms after a long war. John showed a broad grin.
“This, my friend, is worth a good bottle of Daniels finest I just bought a year ago.”
“You try to fuck me?”
“No, I’m straight.” He threw a strange but ironic glance at me. “You’re too, aren’t you?”
“Go, get that damn bottle!” I shouted almost loughing. “I seriously need a drink now.”
There’s nothing like finding a soul mate inmidst a foreign world. I’d never forget him or the day when the ICE cought him finally. He had been an extremist, and old school sportsman, a friend. And now he was a legend and his soul had merged with the grid forever. |
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| Beatz |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 1:03 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 08 Jan 2008
Posts: 61
Location: Docks. Nope, i'm not a fisher.
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hey, great one!! and you were afraid your english wasn't good enough?? gimme a effing break! really enjoyed readin this, stop by the docks anytime for a coffee,  |
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| Rynard Benedict |
| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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[ Note: Well, somehow I decided to write another few lines for shits and giggles and for those, who might like to read a bit more. It’s still an on going exercise, seems like I develope a little obsession. But this stuff won’t be more than loose episodes and fragments, I have no plot in mind and I’ll just throw another piece on this pile if I think of something. Feel free to comment, or let me know if a certain phrase is actually too weird. ]
… a few months later …
I didn’t get used to it. The whole Sprawl with its compressed chaos in the foreground and its massive wall of faceless titans in the far background seemed to skid slowly into an giant abyss right behind the horizon. The ground moved, you were feeling it and you were awaiting any time that one of these titans touched the edge and keeled over, falling into a big black nothing.
Or it was just because I was still thinking of John. The moment when the black Russian ICE drilled through his neocortex like an old BOSCH machine: slowly but merciless. Never underestimate the genius of old school engineers, who could still draw the construction plan of the Sputnik satellite en detail on a few shreds of toilet paper, while having enough vodka in the blood to kill a siberian bull. Yet their sense of sadistic humor. Never.
*Tic-Tic-Tic*. Rebekka. Her artificial lung made this noise from time to time, almost inaudible. *Tic-Tic-Tic*. She slept.
Rebekka aka 2K_RBT_2C.
She hated this handle herself but if you didn’t want to loose your reputation by changing your handle you simply had to stick with it. Besides it let you look like a gridshit. Not that she didn’t started like one - we all did, even if no jockey would ever tell you this. But she did something amazing using just this nick and *boom*, there she was. Shit happened, poor 2K_RBT_2C.
Rebekka. The first girl that really electrified me, although – or from a different view - because of she wasn’t much female beeing a half machine herself. Her past read like “cute strong girl with exquisite tech skills joins the military to be put in the Digital Warefare Division but sadly got hit by a fucking old fashioned bomb in the first mission.”
Because she had fucked some important high rank earlier, the military showed mercy and put her in a special program were she’d been “reconstructed”, turned into some freaky ninja über-jockey with the ability to crush skulls or to pump nasty nanoids into your blood stream which reconfigured your friend-or-foe recognition (well, this one didn’t worked very well ever, most victims just irretrievable lost their minds, she had told me)
Unluckily – for the military – she wasn’t that kind of soldier, not in any way, and she left the army short after. She still was just a cute strong girl with exquisite tech skills. Somewhat upgraded.
*Tic-Tic-Tic*
I closed my eyes and dreamt of falling titans.
_________________
"People who say I'm dystopian are middle class pussies"
-William Gibson
Last edited by Rynard Benedict on Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:03 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Rynard Benedict |
| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia
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Next day.
“Wanna change eyes? Earn money?”
“Piss off.” I said. But that nasty boy just didn’t listen to me. Rebekka grined.
“Your eyes good, bring good money. If sold. Choose change, Produkt.” he continued unimpressed and threw a plastic bag with five cheap cybernetic eyes in it on the table. Outdated crap, defective most likely. The boy showed the grotesque imitation of a friendly smile. “Plus a four hundred creds. No, best offer – a four hundred and twenty. Take it. Goody pricey for Neumanns. Indeed.”
“Listen up, fucktard. I DON’T SELL MY EYES.” I replied loud and clear, and for a loose moment I felt a dozen glances on my back, coming from around. Rebekka and I sat in the “Broken Motivator”, a bar which had its chattel from about ten other bars that already went bankrupt. They were playing hokey japanese pop music, that kind of numbing, irresistible music that bypassed your cognition and made you think of a warm summer day in a childhood you never had.
I blinked. “And how the fuck … did you find out?”
“Produkt has german accent. And have your DNA here.” He showed a little device. “Says you Neumann Produkt.”
I looked at him and couldn’t believe it. Rebekka loughed her ass off, appereantly she found this little bizarre situation very entertaining. But what I couldn’t believe wasn’t actually that this little bastard was able to figure out my accent and to get my DNA without me knowing it. He had called me “Produkt”. I wasn’t sure about this first but now all doubts were gone. It’s how they had called me in Blech Stadt, when I had arrived there. Even Krulle had called me this first, letting me know that I had been manufactured like a puppet. And indeed, somewhere in my DNA double helix you could find a chain of base pairs that decoded into a brand, serial number, production date and so on if read with a proper decoder that has the size of a pack of cigarettes. Just like that one the boy held in his hand.
Rebekka suddenly stopped loughing when she noticed that I was falling into a critical state somewhere between “berserk” and “catatonic”. And this again scared the shit out of this guy, he stuttered “Sorry, sorry.” and left the bar hectically.
Produkt. I hadn’t heard this name for a long time.
“Hey, Ryne. Cool down. He’s just a poor bastard like you though his DNA went somewhat nuts.” She tipped on her front. ”Faulty series, probably a mock.”
“And you?” I asked her.
She loughed but it sounded like it went through a high-pass filter, thin and metallic. “Pfizer Lifelabs.”
I took a deep breath. “Let’s go somewhere else, the music makes me sick. I bet they play that shit in the archologies all day long.”
_________________
"People who say I'm dystopian are middle class pussies"
-William Gibson |
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