Punk appeals to me.  Don't know why.  Don't care.  In Sacramento we have awesome punker groups... the Groovie Ghoulies, Knockoffs and Seven Seconds.  All friends.  Here's a little cyberpunk tale dedicated to them from someone who thinks Rocky Horror and the Addams Family and giga-cuss-think is clean fun.  By the way, my folks are the coolest so anything contrary herein is just wordfun...the family here is dysfunk maxxed.  Have a cool read in the DHFAG word mosh.  English teachers, chill...this is headbang geek fun.

Bookmarks:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7 

Double Helix Family Album Gig

© Evan Myquest, 2000

You look at the mates’ side of the bed you just left. They won’t be up for another few minutes, thanks to a snooze hypo from the headboard. Not your fault, not theirs either. The setting has been at the default for a month or two, now. You like this time to yourself, usually.

You try to bounce up out of bed on a beautiful riverbluff panoramic Rancho Serra, California morning. The sun is already warming, but there’s still a briskness and freshness to the day that hasn’t been affected by the heat yet. Not a trace of humidity, but a still crispness in the air. There’s something lacking in the bounce department this morning. You hit the oversize button on the clock terminal, and the Madonna PIM/Trix system gently (setting: gentle fondle, no Truth or Dare until out of the shower) remarks exaggerated Brooklynese, "Good day, Arthur. Are you feeling that it’s your special day?"

Oh, God, no. Not that kind of special. It dawns on you what the hell she’s talking about.

Sure, it is true that the day is "special" in a chrono-spective way. It’s your birthday. You defensively Batmobile your mind to prepare for a few of your relatives to show up on the Wall, or the Net, to remind you that you’re older, better, and probably far enough in to be coming out the other side of geezerdom.

Yours hasn’t always been a fun family, but everyone tried to stay friendly enough through the years. Blood was mostly replaced by ones and zeros, bits and bytes these days. Fiber optics and five hundred channels really was enough to root change sabotage the family unit, after all.

Not even the latest dry -droid Madonna holograph clock (with optional built in AI shrink-link) can express the ritual greeting in a way to make you the slightest bit grateful for chalking up another rotation. As if it was some Extreme Sport feat deserving of the ongoing ritual high-fives. The Madonna AI Shrink-Link will probably have a field day with you, in five minutes. You know a little Truth goes a long way on a vulnerable day like today.

bookmark one

And yes, the fucking sun came up despite your apathy, and all your knowledge banks are intact despite your trying to garble dump them last night. Tequila Sunrises after shooters aren’t pretty at your age, but like pollution, they do something surreal to real sunrises. Also, you point out to no listener, until he cryo-passed, Mick Jagger never was pretty at any age, let alone the milestone you’re uncelebrating, today. Cool, in and out of retirement, mostly, but not a pretty hunk kind of star, mostly macho swagger, and a limber bod until the end. (Keith aged for both of them.) You want to wait for fruit sugar contact to hit, before you get into this too deeply.

Too retro, too early in the morning. Time speeds by your closed eyes and mind.

The mates squirm with the timed hypo. Suse and Lor pad to the shower together. They know the calendar as well as you do. They’ll be packed and outtahere before you could find the paperwork to renew their contract, if you wanted to. Which you might, if they had any reasonable respect for the way you carried on last night, and this consequential morning after. They aren’t at fault for not understanding, you muse. Hell, if you were their age, you wouldn’t even try to figure what was that old bastard acting up for. You’d’ve left for the next wetware whiskey bar.

Ah, Jim Morrison. Pere La Chaise lounging, still.

Your bio-parents are the first on the Wall. Thank modern medicine and virtual reality for keeping them around so long, but...they’re singing. At last night’s volume setting. It isn’t pretty what you wish them to do with their wishes. And again, you know they mean well, as always.

But you wanted to be an outlaw. Aw c’mon, Ma, all the kids are forming bands. They’ve got these neato Ventures instant Surf Guitar lessons, and all, and how about a guitar for Christmas? Huh? Huh? You got a fucking clarinet you couldn’t play for shit. You managed to royally fuckup an all-school solo, while your parents were there blaming each other for the fiasco. Then they blamed you...didn’t practice enough, skipped too many lessons, and on and on. No wonder you became a fund-churning wonker.

You crank the wayback machine in your mind.

Catholic Rosalie and Frank. Ma and Pa Bottoms. They talked you out of dropping out of everything, and their eternal happiness vision for you turned you so passive that life took, and is still taking, a sweeping no speed limit detour around you. Zipping along four lanes wide open, peers galore are all waving at you, but there’s no HERE ARTHUR, HERE FOR SELF-RESPECT on-ramp you can find. Rosalie and Frank got downright gruesome putting you through junior high, university and grad schools. Ugly. They kept coming up with stuff like "you’ll thank us someday when the Russians are pounding on the U.N. tables, again."

Summing up this wetware reverie: when you wished you’d charted your course with Gene Simmons and ended up still sweatin’ with Richard, obviously, something’s terribly awry.

bookmark two

You get to the kitchen just in time to get a rousing song of Happy Birthday, Arthur, from the appliances. 44kHz. CD quality, the omni-proc keeps reminding you, like it’s something grand. CD quality isn’t what it used to be, if the fucking can opener has it, you grouch.

Now you’re wallowing in self-examination thoughts on this occasion of obligatory contemplativeness. Except the wonky lifelessness-passing-before-your-eyes movie lasts just a blink before a Turner movie soundbit John Wayne the Toaster says, "I’m done, pilgrim. Anything else, Birthday Boy?" You wonder what Ozzy, the Juicer, has up its chip this morning. You’re going to be extra careful with your fingers.

You take the rational thought-process, throw it out, check the bank, and decide to venture down one of those branches you abandoned back in the Looooovvvve Generation. You spin the wetware onto Bearcat-scan setting (somewhere between catatonic spiraling database/PIM freefall and autonomic body "underwarez" function monitor), and newsread pick the auto-biographical HardCopy version of your headlines. The best you come up with: your daily FOIA tearsheet is worse than dull reading, despite the dramatic sound effects, multimedia re-creations, and all. If it wasn’t for the heart rate graph saying you were fit, you’d dump the Cobain tombstone icon on it for a big Control+Alt+Delete reboot.

You wish you could get one of those little shit hackers to do the government’s file on you, and put erotic film festival hosting, surgeon impostoring, and something about whimsical tower-sniping, but the crack-bits and key-bytes are beyond even them these days. As for a backdoor on your life, they’re all banging loose screen doors of the Mississippi variety. Very loud, very ineffective.

bookmark three

You disengage, somewhat repulsed by what you see as your own looking glass life as you really are, which on other days, couldn’t, wouldn’t, concern you less.

The holo asks, "Arthur, wanna play T/D, you have two minutes before Massager."

This is not the time for whip marks, one family Wall break-in while you’re getting it, and it would be all over the Friends and Family Network before the stuttering stopped, and the ropes got loosened.

"No thanks, Maddy. Stay TSR with me today, though. I’ll probably want a decent shoulder later on."

"Arthur, when you could have this?"

It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it got your eyebrow to jump a bit. Anatomically correct is not always appetizing or pretty. As you thought, one of the mates had reset Maddy for Flashy&Trashy. A good-bye pinch.

It's such a nice natural un-weathery day, you say to yourself, it shouldn’t go for crapthink. For a little wellness trial, you thumb the laser remote cursor, and click the Lifecycle icon. It’s set for a later flashsession of track-paced air-guitar with your fave flavor of Lifecycles of the Rockin’ Famous, MTV Aerobic Grind (you’re quicksaved between The Who and Vicious settings) on the workout dial, and you wonder if the spandexes are still "with Washer."

Ah, a little naked workout could dispel the birthday blues a bit, you muse. Middle-aged crazy isn’t half bad considering the alternative- drug induced euphoria and some holo-turbo anal pipe-cleaning. In an atypical mood, you go for Naturelle; you take the air guitar sesh for a spin online, now.

The ‘cycle is pissy today, some bug up its holo-butt about your stiff fingers, but you tell it to chill on the sarcasm; tequila fueled some of the best rock ever played. You do eighty percent for most of the sesh. It shouldn’t complain so much. Your fret stretches and the 60’s primo Hendrix setting aren’t that different, two or three nines (99.999% same-o). So the slide work is off-- it’s just that damn looping birthday distraction, back again.

Even so, the guitar makes another crack about ‘ludes and attitudes. You do a Who on the E-HAG for the sheer fun of it. It screams bloody murder, but you bash away against the protesting Marshall, who wants to know what it did to you, anyhow.

By ten, unlike the maters, the blues have come and gone, and are back, again. As you start to loop again, you’re interrupted by a mindchime Hanna Barbera, doink-whistle-thunk. Courtesy of your creditcard demographics, you’re sent a notice for the Annual Virt-Rock Hall of Fame Stage and Studio CD, May update. It features a Bluestick live auditorium piece. You get the Academy Hall on the CD, then Bluestick feeds live from the sat to that background. A little mixing goes on and you’re there, Arthur.

And, for some retrospective reason, it sounds real interesting, today. You’ve been following the scene, and know that if you do this month’s virtual Rock Hall of Fame Stage and Studio CD, you will find some outlaw, sick exhibits.

As usual, the Rock Academy of Arts and Letters listenup.wav file recommends either joining the stage groups (you do qualify despite the HAG’s cracks), or going tenth-row center, your choice. Studio sessions are lurk only. (E-vigilantes see to that.. Those downloads are way heavy to have someone breaking into and "tagging" the performance off the hydrant-feed. The cataloguing and librarying of multiple "official" studio versions became nightmarish with the advent of weekly Fame releases. One official history was it for everyone, now, by universal hacker accord and heaven help the hacker that fucked with the Hall of Fame download.)

"Ah, ancient Metal-dude, just be aware that this month’s music has some, like, bumpy tenth-row centers." All you have to do is sign the release and apply the trodes, adjust your goggles, and be very, very careful what mind-moshing crowd you Zelig into. Dramamine is de rigeur for Swayed at your age. Their effects can put inner ear pop equilibrium into next month’s Daytimer.

bookmark four

Somewhere, another hyperjump mind-chime goes off about someone who hacked the Hall’s best studio groove, and tried to exit away from the E-lantes via the Pock-Rock HCL acid squirtgun exhibit. Acid scars like badges. Of course, for lurkers the disappearing teenybopper clothes were a bonus. Only trouble was, the Teflon lotion had a way of sweating off. Ouch. Thank God, VR can’t smell-o-vise, you’ve mentioned, bragging openly to prospective mates in the past.

You know, if you could buy a backdoor cheat hack into the Net version, you could have some real outlaw Net fun, or, just get yourself fucking ass-burned stupid, like that hackabout.

Common knowledge: cy-groupers take both e-vandals and their own iconic Rock idols seriously indeed. You don’t ever want the alt.sex.bondage people re-doing your FOIA file for you. Too hazardous to the earning potential on even the sleaziest biz-track.

Of course, you’re allowed to strip-morph the play Beatles, and you can What-If the Janis-Jimi-Jim-Lived Scene to death (so to speak) until you’re bored shitless, and you can even do the Lost Year party with John, Harry, and May Pang, but fuck with some exhibits (Metallica) and the e-lantes will Toon-Town you to abstraction in a maze of Auschwitz/King/Giger horrors which could just suck-jerky-dry any wet circuit of your own. It’s also common knowledge, enough slackers have come back more idiot than they went in to attest to the studio hack risk. Nothing against cy-skaters, it just seems they can’t resist fucking with the most cherished moshbiters out there more than most. With the usual exploding goggle-contacts trick the prime result.

Just supposing, if you do successfully hack the virtual Rock Hall of Fame, you can e-change history to include a bizarro-Zelig very much worthy of that little asshole that painted himself the actual Fifth Beatle, in every scene including the assassinations. A reality changer. You’re not sure how you could hack into something like that, but it would be a wild fucking onramp to LIFE ITSOWNSELF.

How are you coming by these outlaw thoughts, you wonder.

Hacking the Net? Where is this coming from? "Maddy, is that you farting around upstairs?" She answers, negative, she’s busy working the afternoon stocktrades, as you setup.

Yet, the voice from within persists. You think it might be time to re-calibrate the inside-outside fader on the cushion speakers.

The voice goes on.

How far will you go to RogueMoon the Net code? And how tough, how much damage can your expensive vrimage sustain, or what parts of it would you sacrifice to get through?

Something otherly is channeling your bandwidth. It talks of a bad attitude, about your sitting pretty while sitting tough in a Toon-loop gutter. Basically, skater hell. Are ya gonna stay there, Arthur? Or, are ya gonna mosh? Aha, you recognize the sound of a skater-vader using Jack Nicholson’s pattern.

Again, nothing against skaters. But you, Arthur, are a level five geezer rocker, and you’ve done T/D with Maddy on the R U Fucking Nuts setting. (Holo, of course.)

But where is the voice coming from? Which fucking appliance is it coming through to you, now? You are aware that the juice levels on your AI circuit aren’t quite stable as they usually are. It hits you. Some adver-fuck’s hacked your TSR cellemetry circuit.

You hum a note to yourself that you shouldn’t make too many bet-the-ranch financial decisions today. You sit down at the newspaper to await the next adver-gambit from the skater’s link.

bookmark five

The waiting almost makes you punch up your Mommy-line connect. Busy. Your analyst is probably running up the national debt on his Mommy-phone. Linuses and Lucys (especially the bimbo morph versions), are cool too, but do without a Mommylink? You wouldn’t try getting to tomorrow without one. Even drugged, you know you wouldn't last an IEEE standard Thursday’s-worth.

It's like sharing bandwidth--the new Friends and Family way to compute. Cheaper than a 900 number, you muse. But, how fucking good can anything that claustro be?

You continue waiting for the bastard’s suckspiel.

You mentally question everyone's (especially yours) lack of appreciation for solitude, and yet the Hall of Fame CD (and your birthday) has you continually looping about a past that had renaissance glory, renaissance politique and a renaissance in and of art. Back in those days of Jimi, Janis and Jim. God, those were times...the dead Js, you remember, were creative, system bucking, risk it all, recreationally Kevorked, properly hollowed out, fully abused corpses.

You wayback on the ‘60’s nuclear Damocles, that brutal V-war, that one small step majestic scientific been there done that stunt. But without the Js, it wouldn't have indelibly, historically, survived so deeply ingrained in you, the last (you feel) present-day Woodstocking Boomer. They died for everyone’s sins. Fuck...free love had to cost something.

Ah, today, with so much virtual, so little virtuosity. The last thrill of art headbanging pitifully against walls of soundbit sopo-politics.

Jeez, where did that come from? Who’s on your circuit, you demand. No answer, but the juice level flickers, again.

Obviously, on your birthday you need a little furball of the cat that used to be. The historical hangover on bumping another zero has become too much to take straight. Now, you’re really pressured. You clickleaf over the 'fieds of the paper once more, determined to pluck just one experiential rose from the ashes and cinders of truetype screaming commercial soundbits. The 900 quicktime ads give good wiggle for sale or rent. New mates for tomorrow are on your list. Life has become nothing more than a vending machine that jacks you off in myriad ways. Tough cookie times, you hear-think.

That wasn’t an Arthur thought--no fucking way.

The drop of the coin, the tug on the dangle.

There he goes, again. Clearer, on target bullseye triangulation on you.

More coin than time, these days. Worse ways to coast the continuum. Tugging your dangle for your life-jangle.

You notice there's a short, subliminal Boomer-hook ad oscillating in the paper. How these things got past the editors continues to mystify you. You know it was put there by a young, fast-buck hack. Maybe even the adver-bastard that’s chiming you today. After all, you're easily demographically-tagged today, easy fucking meat; like a post-hypnotic, it works. You really want what this ad promises, proposes. It gives you the creeps how good the tag is, but you can't not mouse up the icon video number in the paper.

Let’s see, a little triangulation on birthdays ending in zero, exclude management, include fund churners.

Bingo!

Ad too good to be true? Who fucking cares? The "refundable down" is chickenshit. You’re already nostalgia-whipped to a froth.

bookmark six

Vaguely, you remember something about the name of a famous running Hall of Fame scam-hack, but it's not a feeling you allow to interfere with making the surf connection. If this little shit ‘fied cybjourner can 3-D it for you, well, who are you to refuse...hell, you think, you could have a spot on an x-ray you don't know about.

Your coin level has lapped your spendability, so that's not an issue. You think if it's only half as good as the pitch, you'll do it no matter how many times it takes to get it right. You didn't put in those shop hours at the churn just to watch the spawns eat the coin level in scoop-gobble-bites from cryo-quarium.

Sometimes you don't want your buttons pushed so easily. But now, the juices call, and your e-wallet's gone doink stiff and spouting fountains all of a sudden. Whoever the hack is on your line, you realize he or she’s good. The tag is solid enough for a scab ump to catch.

***

You connect via a clean (you checked) 900 line. You can't hear the coins drop, but they do. A soundbit cash register ka-ching on the blaster sounds several times to indicate a big transfer. The soundbits lasted a little longer than you thought they would. Hello, Amex.

The vid callback anonymous goes off, and you put the subliminal filter on and crank the volume leveler. You don't need the psych. You're already sold solid, but you just need the words and a little smooth tongue in the ear about the trip.

The junior in the ad reminds you of some fucking cyber-Beetlejuice a la 90's.

Smirking, knowing you're already off the top of the slide, you pseudo-rasp at the vid, "--show me what you got, junior" thinking to yourself, I got the means and the dreams, the coin, the time, and the 'tude. You feel the need to back off the curmudgeon voice a little, "Look, I'm very interested, in fact with a need, no limits. What will I get in this floral aural arrangement you're peddling? Other than being young again, which is a suckish but not altogether repulsive thought, what's your hick-hock-shop offering? Are you offering what I think you’re offering?"

***

Change of voice: Cut to the circuit breaker on the other side of Arthur Bottoms’ commport...in a studio across the cy-universe from Sacramento, not necessarily Alabama but in the virtual vicinity. A man sits goggled, thinking about the tug on his line. Should he play it, or just hook it deep before reeling. The man doesn’t like the game, but there’s coin to be made if the connection doesn’t get broken. He knows he has to get his bona fides across, and smoothly. He knows he has to purge his ‘tude before it comes across in the info-digdown.

If you think Toaster was nasty to you this morning, I can make your toilet flush to your bath with a few pump valve hacks. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise? And that Madonna clock? Tell everyone why don’t you want one with a real tongue, your shrink-link Mommy says your pony did something to you once? Wasn’t anything your pastor didn’t try to do in the vestibule, eh Arthur? Wake up, wake up!

How do I get my bandwidth, Mr. Bottoms? Make most of my money? It isn't from the cobbled goggleware, that's for sure. I do it by creating slick, but recycled, 3-D Multimedia, commercial and tastefully aesthetic and artistic, presentations like Cliff Note summaries for the University DBs. I’m the one who puts the Max Headroom touch to them, the lazy-ass professor-types download it to their next assembly, the meager e-funds flow, and we're all pretty looping middle class appearing wealthy. That's just what I do for my day job funds, Mr. Bottoms. Too fucking bad it's illegal to post the real deal squeal at my age. Age-dissing is the only way to keep the hacks down. And it hasn't helped that I transgressed a GI ‘crypt or two in my past. There's a few brownouts that certain authorities are still trying to tie to an ID I've been alleged to use, on occasion.

Honestly, Mr. Bottoms, I'm clean cracking these days. I have a legendary--ok, somewhat legendary--rep for the artistic side of the frontier. With a starving public with the spinal fortitude God gave marsh reeds in the wind, I've done meagerly well on the main net shortloads. With my droog engineers and own fanny-pack Walkman ADATS studio, I hop-splice a personal sit-in gig for someone deserving like you on the rare read: expensive opening the ‘Net leaves.

The commercial stuff is easy, but BORING; the hard ones are the personal pieces that fuck with headtrip boundaries. Like what you want. Not everybody skating around here has the mox to cop a hack like that. Everybody's a walking asylum full of crackers looping up there, and you go too far at a fucking risk. Pick the wrong sub, and wind up leaving behind a stepped on jellied doughnut.

You like this connection? I can ring you through the fridge, if you like, Mr. Bottoms? Your Hollyweird Soundbit filter setting is expensively delicious. OK, cool. Will do, Mr. Bottoms.

If you study the possibilities, Mr. Bottoms, I can have you seshing as the real Aerosmith just about your age or even Mike Bluestick god, don’t ask for him in no time. I’ll provide lyrics what the fuck is a Bluestick lyric to this geezer, holo-stude, background walk-throughs and the Rock-ademy disk for you. I’ll have complete control at all times, and should there be an audit on the ‘Net, I’ll have you back to ground in no time flat. I have it waiting for you at your smallest urge, this rare almost invisible backdoor in the crack-code.

Usually, I work my fargging ass off on the personal gigs, and never have a goddam clue what I'm doing until the muse arcs lightning through my glue-ons.

You’ll love your tech-stude, and I mean a rack of nines, here. No better, Mr. Bottoms.

Let me ‘splain how this gig works, Boomer-geez.

There isn’t much to risk on your side. You’re barely alive in there, now, anyhow. You can take your Shrink-link along for security in case you get the chickenshit blanks. That bitch trix has been babysitting you for a longtime, I can tell. TS-fucking-R, total titsuck going, eh, geez? Can’t pull the plug, anymore, eh?

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