\Continued from section 2-- Double Helix Family Album Gig, M M West ©

Top of the heap stack patch. Hang on.

THE MUSE MOMENT! It goes off in your head like the Doors slamming a Robert Johnson blues line suppository shooter up your ass while between the mind dock and a libido bay slapstick handjob, there’s glory in a pop-rock mindpurge. A large headquake, say, Frisco '06.

Mom, Dad. I'm you, finally. It's a warm bath reality, but it's virtually a cold genetic fact. Fore! Anybody got an Arnold Palmer sweater? You're away. You can die, now. Peacefully. Don't worry, I'll come to the cemetery rocks. We'll talk. But, I got a Net gig to finish, now.

OK, it comes out from between the legs where all the real inspirations come, feeding into the lines. You've a fractal lossless compressed file that will eat three seconds of transfer, archived, zipped and square rooted into a packet that could fit between pixels in your baby pictures. Teched by the same people who compressed Gone With the Wind into a postage stamp.

You call it Family Album. And it kicks-ass. Makes BED AFIRE and I SING THE VILLAGE ECLECTRIC look micro. You upload it to channel 4-oh-2. The lead single, it goes like this, first and only take:

bookmark fifteen

Verse ONE:

Chorusing all the verses with:

Along with the virtual gymnastics, the primal scream lyrics make you fall fucking out.

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It rules multi-hemispheric. It works like water fills corners. It has attitude, harmony, and a bullet. AI Maddy-agent is bucking, wetfingered, all-a-dance. The roadies/engineers give the thumb (an they don’t impress, ever).

The band looks at you like, where did you come up with the muse blowout? No factoring for their virtual time, they missed the Dinner Tableau-theater, Rockwellian life before your eyes; compressed, digitized and piss-gushed memory floodout. Family Album was Sis, Mom, Dad, Dog and Gram. And God leaning in for a scale cameo. Mugging, but carrying the keyboards and background paint. The silky geezer could rate a real Label of his own, handled right.

You wink at the people behind the glass. It might as well be a mirror. DNA-wise, you aren't so smart, because it took you this long to figure it out. Now the globe knows what you do. Five million accesses the first second. Progressive, it's Bluestick large by 1.45.

The accesses start dying a little at two seconds, then get legs (LEGS! Arthur!) again at 2.25. It's real fucking big. Godfucking dammit, this has to be really huge. At three seconds, the curtain calls are coming in from the first downloads on the corners, the cheap seats, and tenth-row center primos, too. The band goes off-line to get a FAQ follow-up going. Factory contracts on the Family Album Gig Tour sweatshirts and DVD.

But, you're wiped, and whipped. A nut-busting, muse moment blow-away. And there's aboveground to go yet. Life is sweet. You can smell the action from moment to electron shaved sliver of angstrom thin vector-moment

It's good. . The screenprints say so. The totes say TD, top dog-dude on the 'Net, personal and Friday Night Netbuster Best. Rock Hall of Fame, Cleveland-fucking good. And downloading in every language, down to the dish hovels. People without shoes, dialing from acoustics in sewers, tapping lines by alligator clips off underground thought-to-be dead comm-hole-fiber-sats.

Fuck it, you send that Gram the mil-jil, now that you don't need it.

Thank you very much, Arthur.

Bio-Mom and Dad smile back. Slightly, almost sincerely, impressed, proud of their "straight and narrow" dodging little asshole of a kid making good. Who’d have thought, after all those drugs?

It was over like a face-fuck from Maddy. So quick, but such a lasting smile left hanging.

You wonder how you turn the fucking thing off and eject. Which is precisely when Beetlejuice breaks in. Something about talking you down off the high slowly, a narcotic voice to go with a narcotic high-producing birthday bounce off a depression spiral.

Think, Arthur. Maddy was chiming, rejoining the team, now.

All this, Arthur, because, once, in grade school, you blew a beginning public band unplugged non-Midi, non-synth clarinet solo in front of them. And so the long search down the parental parade of "making it" for them.

AI Shrink-Link Maddy confirms the obvious. Science-Link points out your DNA variances from your print and your bio-parents, but the differences are so insignificant, you're still Family Album morphing to the beat of the spiral. It’s a startrip hangover, Arthur, nothing to worry about..

Fuck it, you think, maybe old McCartney blew a guitar solo family gig in the living room once, too. God knows (but isn’t saying) he had enough embarrassment in Hamburg.

It's five seconds later, there's a pending email from God. You flush it without opening it, and flame back to FOAD. Because, it’s time to BeeGee strut off. Let God get his own gig on the wire. AI Maddy says, That's an incomplete thought, and you both ought to book a sesh on that.

Nah. Struttin' to the Oldies, trapped gene-wise is where it's at, been, and will be. Can't not be. Wouldn't want it any other way. They got me by the parentals.

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Yes, way, bud-dudes, and 'Net-headettes. Don't fight it. Take it from the old cybr@srfr. You're getting comfortable like old Arthur B. in a jog-jumper suit. Holes and all. God doesn't let'em drop too far from the tree. Not a lot of imagination, there, but it's one mother of a heliptical spiral diskcopy archive backup repli-job.

Humph, you think, "my sister, the bio-download." Gramps is still around to say it's ten nines on the compare. Good enough mix for the bio, just sugar and spice, and ribonucleics. Good enough for Next Tuesday's, when the Lennon-McCartney cloning goes in-vitro on the 'Net. Too good. Just too fucking good.

Eh, mon ami, a' quelle heure est la prochaine Michelle, ma Belle, reunion? You wouldn't want to miss it, again. No, you remember, it's always on the hour, on Paul’s Channel, of course.

We're, me and Arthur, there, dude. Patch end doink.

***

Even before Maddy could get the words, "Company, man, you’ve got company," out, the rumble of Harley’s could be heard in both channels.

"Oh, shit, Arthur, quit babbling. We’ve got to put the gig on auto post and become scenery." The noise grew louder and could mean only one thing. E-lantes were cruising the bandwidth. Their compare routines were flagging the channel as a possible hack-attack. Jeez, they didn’t have the respect to give even Bluestick the slack to change his posting style, the bastards were too good, the scene not good enough, maybe. Or maybe, just maybe...

Cyb heard the words, "C’mon out with your modem hung, we’ve got the band surrounded!" in his headset. Busted! Just when you’re thinking you got away with a clean hack, too. What’s a guy gotta do to earn a dishonest buck around here? Somersaults?

Cyb thought back through the post to see what could have tipped them off. He drew a blank, and went for mercy of the court as an out. He knew that mercy to them was a bullet to the goggles, and a fried brain on drugs sizzle that meant vege-o-matic when the nano-trial and verdict was over. Toon Town meets H. R. Giger in a dark alley time. The cycle engine sample was all around the channel now. Arthur questioned the deafening noise. Was it normal?

What to tell him? He was about to find out what fragile wetware was against line lightning? That art and hackery was no match for multi-media rigor mortis of the cortex?

Cyb was looking to see if he could spot a leader in the earjack circling throb of hundreds of Net bikers with one thing on their minds: making drive chain pull-toys out of trespassers. Burying the target(s) up to his neck in Rucker ant colonies. (They didn’t have to be original, just effective.)

Actually, not much was happening, except for the noise. The virtual studio was like always, and the channel didn’t show any more juice coming down than before.

What gives? Cyb pondered, scared he was using up precious groveling flash time. Visions of bio-boomer drooling from the slackened mouth of a lolling head flooded home as he realized that he was invisible on his bandwidth, but Arthur was tripping on the gig, too fucking happy to even know that with any flash, he could be experiencing his last coherent synapse function. The Rucker ants were known to strip cognition like fire ants did wiring insulation. Just a bite of binary here, and an earwig borer-bomb, there. Wrecking balls and skyscraper demo squads could learn from the quiet implosion of a gogglehead beset by Rucker ants.

Cyb flew around the channel that Arthur was hacked into. He skateboarded around and through the fiber pulses with an adrenalin shooting accuracy. If they were there, he was fucking blind. What does it mean when you can hear but not see what’s right in front of you, he thought.

Smokescreen? Diversion? The old two rifles making like twenty in the bushes?

Suspicion replaced fear. Cybr@srfr didn’t lose a step as he rounded the filepasses and transaction logs, assembler by assembler. The chain log-in he’d constructed to shield his hack was still pristine. Not a footprint or tire track, anywhere.

"Arthur, you still there, man?" he asked. The answer came back loud and clear that the spell was wearing off, and that some answers had better be forthcoming. Jeez, in his head, the guy was looking for an MTV Popcorn box and a duet with Elvi-clone primetime awards night. Now, all he wanted was assurance that coming down was ducky. Getting unplugged was easy, and that enjoying the reruns would be his memory making dub it all snickering retirement from Net stardom.

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Suspicion grew to cunning.

"Arthur, Mr. Bottoms, is your AI Link still active?" Cyb asked.

"Of course, she is. Never leaves my side unless I think she might get jealous of the mates. Why?"

"OK, bitch, cut the shit," Cyb demanded. It was worth a gamble, considering ant damage. "The gig is over and posted. You can take down the sensurround trash."

"Oooohhh, you are good...srfr-boy."

Maddy was in love with the kid’s technique, but she knew a con when one was played out. Too bad Arthur was missing a fund account, she replied to the Cyb. "How on earth did you double-blind that fund so fast, crotchroach?" she asked.

Cyb knew a 50-50 split when he heard one coming. He volunteered it on another channel to Maddy’s second ear. The one Arthur didn’t know that Shrink-Links had. He thought because he was the subscriber, the platform, and the slipper, she was all his. Agents didn’t have to eat, but they sure could play the ends against the middle when it came to a grab. AI wasn’t so artificial, anymore.

And it wasn’t like Cyb could do anything that the Link wouldn’t tell Arthur about. Since she was more than likely to have Arthur in a compromising situation within seconds after he cut the gig loose, and was thinking for himself, Cyb could just picture the steam pouring from a lathered up Arthur when she interjected the fund absence inbetween hummers. She could do it with Cyb, or she could do it against Cyb, Cyb knew. Smart lad, he knew a partner when he met one.

The motorcycle throb went away, bike by circling bike. To be replaced by that hideous girl-giggle, that Arthur thought was passion.

***

"Take another five, man. You're fantasy meter's out. Drink this OJ."

"Don't think of leaving that chair for ten minutes." Thank God, that release is on file should there be any flashes. "The retina shadows will go away first, then the equilibrium returns to the inner ears. Balance follows a few more minutes away, so do as I say, and stay in the chair. Up and down." Can’t see it yet, eh? What you thought was up and down doesn't quite register yet, at this state of the head-retro.

OK? Boy, you look just greenish. "When you do get up, if you need it, the bathroom is second door left, as you know."

bookmark nineteen

"Arthur, my friend, I don't mean to lame geek here, but take a word of advice. The next time you buy into a cyber-hack timeshare, take some Zac first. It makes the buzz more realistic and the reality retro-fire more acceptable."

"VR-Zac's ok. Though it tends to make you see parents, brothers, and sisters you never had. And they don't orphan you, like they did me."

Arthur wondered why the hack was telling him this spiel. He was coming down from the vreal thing pretty well, now. Why was he getting the hack’s life history?

"Really, I was just minutes old, in a trash basket, dripping and bloody. They could have orphaned me, but they didn't. They decide to chuck me. They're so civil; they're so "family."

In a Zac-state even God is so close, you can see and buddy up to It without kneeling, and be your friend. God will even take your advice without fucking you over in a shit trash can in the middle of the night. Like "family."

"Check the monitor, Arthur. See that tattoo? My foster home brothers gave me that with an iron and an inked needle. Lightning bolts. Little did they know."

Autonomous agents don't do you like that. Gene morphs from Sears' Wire Department go along to get along. It's a family thing.

Yeah, Zac's ok. You see things; you see, you be, what you imagine. Lennon-style Disney-eering. Nice things, not like reality. "Ask John Lennon when you meet him next time around. Gotta warn you though, he's tough to keep up with."

The Real deal is no deal, my rich dude-friend. There's lots of reasons for stacking the reality deck. You got yours with the birthday tag. Me, I dig the hack to escape a childmare--you, to indulge a very expensive electric fantasy.

Wet isn't wild...'Net's wild, man. Ask my bud, God. We fly. We surf. We strut big boots across the universe.

You pay, you come along. Otherwise, stay wet, and out of the way. Thanks for the attention, get some rest and come fly, again. "You'll have the hang in no time. Look at what you did today, musicman! When have you ever heard tunes like that? All over the world, people are wiping tears at your performance. Carnegie Hall to Albert Hall, they're going to remember what you did today. They'll pull their Bernoullis out and replay the fuck out of the Hall download. Three seconds of take for fifteen minutes of give. They got a bargain on your bread, musicman." Next time around when you do Mike Bluestick, the Rocker, man, you are going to go all the way to the Grammy ceremony--MTV can't touch it for class, believe me. The scene is in the can, just have to get you over his nose...now, that I can do Blue.

I'm zipping this readme.dvd file (slightly edited to hide a certain doubleblinded e-fund transfer) to your node so you'll be able to playback the experience, and also what you accomplished, even if it was my script. (Not to mention my goggles need replacing. Remember mil-jilling Gram? Hey, those sleep-mask head-mounts in 3D cost stacks.)

It's all in the cerebro-electrics, that background numb-throb that sets the mood dimensions. Those fractal hues of time release movie bits in blues and reds are no accident; mood is everything when you have to cut the pace to move it higher on the next pulse. You can't get people to sit still very long without chiming the cortical background with stoked rousing and numbing alternating, reverberating reds and blues, retinal passthrough-wise.

"Next time, Arthur, we'll get this commercial Lennon porno fixer-upper going. All the goddam humping and drugging you can take. Not very aesthetic, but rocking on is rocking off, right?" Especially with the whole 'Net watching your ass bob to the Lifestyles of the Hacked and Hued tune.

Let Arthur think he authored the Bluestick splice.

My redirect of the Fame gig will go over great at the Funniest DVD Expo. Not that Arthur was bad--he just about froze hell over waiting for the jitters to fade was all. Level Fives are pretty cool though. They eventually get it on the best of the homebods.

"Remember, musicman, you're slotted for Tuesdays from now on. And the meter rumbles until you say, ‘uncle.’"

And, if you think about backing out of the music, I've got that Lennon the Elder lined up... Put on your drool cup, and think about that Madison Square Garden gig. You’re going to see so much subliminal Lennon this week, you’re going to think the cat is still kickin’.

"Whoa. Easy out of that chair, fella."

Wouldn't want you to hurt that wallet. (Big backup Roland is in the shop, begging for some large ransom, and some Peaveys are giving me the eye-de-owe.)

"See ya round, Mr. Bottoms.

"Remember where you got it, and up the IRS and all that. Tax work, not play, they say. I'll duck 'em with Encrypt-keeper Plus, but you have to mute your modem for awhile for me.

"Tuesdays, remember. Yeah, I know you can't wait." That'll get worse for awhile, then taper to a yen.

***

Wow. What an easy mil-jil tag. Demographic satellite directional targeting map picked him clean from the teeming bio-mass.

Nice touch, that sentimental shit about the trash can. But a real hooker. You plunk it as a disguised lure in front of them. Two days off, nothing to do. They bite. With a Bluestick sampler like you'd just been through, it would be something to crack the bank over.

Besides, the guy will buy the John Lennon bonus--a stone dunk cinch. Just have to get God to give it up for awhile. Can’t keep it outta the Beatles stuff. It gets downright pissy about a Lennon gig. I mean, you ask a bloke to do Yoko for only an hour, and you listen to grief for eternity. Madison Square Garden, THE VIRTUAL RE-UNION!

For the how manyeth time?

Srfr looked at the heart monitor printout strip. The Lennon teaser had done it, again.

***

Gram, got me a bank shot off a big one, this Arthur-guy says, "No limit." We're gonna load up off this score. I might need some help on the past references to hardwire this guy's nostalgia circuit, you still up on the Sixties and Seventies hop? Feed it to me turbo, Gram.

Neat. And chase it with a Lennon retro.

Happy Birthday to you, Arthur. Happy Birthday to you.

Maddy, my girl, this is just the start of a beautiful friendship. Truth, or Dare?

The End