CyberpunkErotica (7 page)

“We have standards to maintain,” snapped Henry, though I noticed Gwen sighed a little, as though this were an old argument she had long ago lost.

“Yes, indeed, and it’s a paradise compared to the street!” laughed Andrew in manic despair.

“A false paradise,” I snapped savagely. “One I have broken. Look at your security monitors. I’ve given access to the street.” I brought the images up on the multimedia screens. My jaw dropped in shock and horror. The denizens of the street were running wild through the east side of the steel city, smashing, burning, attacking anything they could find.

“And you’re proud of that?” demanded Eileen in disgust. “Proud to have let those animals in?”

“If you treat people like animals, they will become animals,” I snapped back, repeating my former statement as a sort of shield to hide behind. In truth, I was shaken by the orgy of violence on the screens, which was clearly being enjoyed by the people of the street. I’d opened the gates to instigate social reform, not allow full-scale rioting.

“But they’re attacking people,” said Gwen in shock. “They’re killing them!”

I glanced at the screens and cursed. She was right. I linked to the Data Net and beamed my face over every media outlet in the street and the steel city.

Friends
, I cried out mentally, the words speaking from audio devices throughout the city.
You have in your hands a historic opportunity. Do not use this to destroy. Use this opportunity to better understand your neighbours. See that we are all one people.

“Utter rubbish,” snorted Eileen. “That type of thug is nothing like us.” From the audio feedback, I could tell that the street had the same reaction.

“Fuck you!” shouted several voices. “These aristos and ponces are gonna get what they deserve!”

And what do they deserve?
I demanded.

“A bloody good kicking,” shouted a voice. A chorus of agreement rang out.

“Yeah, they think they’re so much better than us,” yelled another. “We’ll show ‘em! From now on, we’ll be the ones living like kings!”

Some are like that, but not all
, I responded in desperation.
I am with them now. I am one of you. I am from the street, and I want us to find common ground!

“You’re with them? Then you’re one of them!” screamed a multitude of voices.

“How else would you be on all the screens?” demanded another. “You’re part of the New World Order!”

“Yeah! Get the bitch! Get all the bastards,” shouted several more voices. The crowd surged forward, smashing windows, grabbing consumer goods, overturning cars, dragging people from their homes, beating, burning, raping, murdering. It was mob violence, orchestrated by mob hate and mob attitudes. There was no thought, no reason, just violence and hatred, hand in hand.

“Ah, here come the riot police,” said Henry in satisfaction. “They’ll soon have the scum back where it belongs. I hope they have the authority to shoot to kill. You have to take a firm hand with these sewer rats. Show them who is boss.”

He and Eileen glared at me in hatred and anger. Only Gwen looked sad and resigned. I knew then that any common ground between the street and the steel city, between the poor and the rich, was doomed.

“Being experimented on is all your sort is fit for!” hissed Eileen in sudden venom, her personal hatred of me bubbling up from within her own insecurities.

I turned away, too upset to even say anything.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Gwen to me, while the others watched the monitors and Andrew finished off the bottle of wine. “I can see you genuinely hoped for revolution, but revolutions don’t really work. Whoever ends up at the top inevitably go on to repeat the mistakes of those they have replaced, and society ends up just as it was. With a few at the top but most at the bottom.”

“Don’t you believe in progress, in equality, in anything?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Yes, but I also realise it will never happen,” she answered. “Society is too solidified now to ever truly change. Not without ripping it all down, but even then, how long before the new world resembles the old one? Some will always have more money or more power or better skills at rousing people, and they will always float to the surface. It is the human way. History shows us this is so. The best we can hope for…”

“Yes?”

“Is to do the best for our loved ones and maybe help a few others on our way through life. Beyond that, we are utterly powerless.”

“Maybe, but I have one last card to play,” I snapped. I summoned the neural link and accessed everything that Vine Corp had ever committed to computer, which was pretty much everything. Their secure data, hidden behind encryption files that would have taken an expert years to unravel and which would have deleted themselves automatically long before then, were child’s play to me and my new abilities.

Every dirty little secret, every bribe, every policy that they wanted to be kept hidden was cracked open and transmitted across the Data Web. Every crooked politician who had given Vine what they wanted, every dodgy deal, every unethical experiment and decision was dumped wholesale into the world for all to see.

Andrew gaped in despair at the information flowing over the world and fell to his knees. I snapped myself free of the mental link and walked out of the silent apartment, unwanted by them, unwanted by the street, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

Chapter Fifteen

I knew I had to end it. My life. What was left of it. Two weeks of hiding after the riots confirmed that. The revolution had come and gone but had never really materialised. It never will. Gwen was right. Nothing will ever change. All I had left, before ending it all, was a final visit to where it all started. To be honest, I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. I couldn’t belong. I was too different from the street and the steel cities.

I made my way into what had been the headquarters of Vine Corp. Most of the building was empty now. The scandal of their corruptions had caused the stock value to plummet. Of course, what caused the outrage in the business community was the fact that Vine got found out, rather than their policies and actions.

They had been bought out by the Tendriz Corporation, their main rival. One less corporation in the world, but now, there was a much bigger one, with even more power. The Tendriz Corporation promised an ethical business model. I had already accessed their mainframe and discovered they were as bad as Vine, if not worse.

The elected government had been all too happy to let Tendriz take over Vine. “The market should regulate itself,” was the line of the official press release, as it always is. The corporations demanded the government back off and do nothing. The government, as always, obeyed. Besides, the government was busy prosecuting all the rioters who had broken into New London and punishing them with long jail sentences. The grievances, the injustices, the sheer unfairness of life had been pushed away by media outrage at the mob. The press demanded action and blood. The government, as always, obeyed.

I made my way to the laboratory where I had been upgraded. Tendriz is now exploring that experiment. All the staff and material had been removed from Vine’s headquarters to give the illusion the project had been shut down, whereas in reality, it was merely relocated and rebranded. Professor Holloway now has a larger budget and even more human guinea pigs to work on. They tried looking for me, but when you can access all information, all commands, all communications, it’s difficult to sneak up on a girl.

I reached the lab. It was empty and dark, apart from a dim light in Professor Holloway’s old office. I walked in and saw Andrew, sitting on a cheap chair he must have scavenged from somewhere. I knew he was there. I’d followed him on the surveillance cameras for a week as he wondered New London in a daze, refusing to answer his phone, to access his emails, to go to work. Now, he was here, snivelling in the chair.

He looked up as I entered. He squinted in the darkness.

I mentally increased the light level just enough so he could see me.

As he recognised me, he burst into tears, then laughter and then more tears.

“It’s Zara!” he finally hiccupped. “Zara, who I had to convince to help us. I couldn’t convince you of anything, could I? Not when you have access to everything. Now look at me. My life is ruined. Your fault!”

“Your life is ruined because you embraced just one aspect of it. You believed it, breathed it, and now it has been taken away you are left with nothing. Now, you’re like the street.”

“No, no, no,” he shrieked, shaking his head violently. “I’m not like the street. I’ll never be like the street. I have knowledge! I have understanding beyond the sheep on the street. I’ll never be like them. I know too much. I’m too clever!”

“You’re not clever. You’re just a drone. Just like everyone on the street is a drone. The only variation is we’re programmed in different ways. You were programmed to aspire. We were programmed to sink down. Yet we were all indoctrinated with the fallacy that we were free.”

“I was free. I had wealth and security and respect! What did you ever have?”

“Nothing, because life is just a grey drizzle for anyone from the street and golden drizzle for those in steel cities. Your corporations and governments have made it that way.”

“No! You’re violent and morally depraved,” burbled Andrew. “I saw it! I saw it on the screens. I saw it in the violent behaviour of the mob who just wanted to burn and smash! They’re all trapped by their own hatred and violence. I see it in you! No wonder you all mutilate yourselves with tattoos and piercings! You’re so violent, you carry out that violence on yourselves!”

“Our bodies are all we have been left with, the only commodity we have after years of having our rights and dignities stripped away by the media, by government, by business. Our bodies are our own canvas. Modifications, tattoos, mutilations, cutting, it is our way of marking our canvas, of making a personal stand, something unique to us. Except,” I added bitterly, the knowledge sour in my mind, “everyone marked themselves in the same way, with piercings and tattoos, so we were all still just following the herd, deluding ourselves that we were individuals, somehow different or special.”

“We are your superiors in every way,” giggled Andrew. “I’m better, I’m better, I’m better than you!”

“Yet, any sense of responsibility and morality you ever had was whittled away by colleagues, peer pressure, greed, your lust for money and power. Don’t you realise that you bought into a false reality just as I bought into mine? We are all in cages. We can’t escape.”

“Alphas aren’t in cages!” shrieked Andrew in shock. “We control the world!”

“But the system controls you,” I said gently. “I brought down the Vine Corporation but another company has taken its place. Get rid of the chief executive? The deputy chief executive will continue with the same policies and agendas. Get rid of the entire board of directors? Any new board coming in will work within the structure left behind by the old board. The system will never change. New people follow existing structures, like ants running along a tunnel, never changing, merely supporting.

“You see the circle we’re all caught in?” I asked. “We’re all trapped, Andrew. It’s just that some cages are more comfortable than others.” I realised I too was trapped. I would never be able to get away because everywhere was the same.

“I’m not in a cage, you are,” burbled Andrew, his fractured mind stuck in a groove.

He was right, of course. I was in a cage. I dreamed of the revolution but the dream was actually somebody else’s. I just parroted it. In any case, the revolution was a lie.

Even when I thought I was being truly free, such as when fucking Clare and Kyle in jail, I was buying into someone else’s vision of freedom, one that satiated their gratification. I swapped one box for another, one that stated that sexual freedom and freedom of the body is liberation, but in the end, I was still only doing what others believed. I sold myself cheaply for an illusion of power. What did we achieve in that cell? A few moments’ pleasure. After that, nothing had changed. We were still locked in, still telling ourselves that the revolution was coming, that all would be well… and neither Kyle nor Clare even bothered to ask my name.

Andrew was as bad, just in a different way. He kept his head down, let people do what they wanted without protest even though he knew it was wrong, in the hope that he could climb the corporate ladder and achieve the goal he had been conditioned to want–gain power and make lots of money, for money means you are a success.

The fact remained that we had both bought other people’s values and called them our own. We were still in cages, but we made the cages ourselves, locked ourselves away inside, thinking we were free.

“That’s why we all turn inward in the end,” I mused out loud. “You’ve turned inward to madness. I’m using my new tech to make my own reality. It’s really nothing more than an extension of what you used to do as you climbed the corporate ladder and what I used to do with my body modifications.

“You should go home, Andrew. Your mother is worried about you.” Turning, I left that darkened place behind.

Chapter Sixteen

I I lay on my side on the king-size bed. A dark, gentle, red light from the ceiling spilled down, making the bedroom soft and seductive. I had my Wi-Fi uploader relaying the three hundred or so channels directly into my mind. The three hundred channels were also playing on the home movie screens that covered the walls, the latest in multi-rotational home cinema entertainment.

Wrecker, my boyfriend, walked slowly toward the bed. I turned off the entertainment channels. This was entertainment enough for both of us. We could exist in each other’s company with no outside distraction in our secluded flat. All we needed was each other. We could always see it in each other’s eyes.

I lay back, watching Wrecker as he approached the bed. He slowly, teasingly, pulled his black T-shirt and black leather trousers off. I watched his muscled body as he paced back and forth, letting me enjoy the view of his hard body before he leaned over and kissed me passionately. He then moved down my body, kissing every bare inch, until he reached my clit ring. He always stops there. My stimulation is important to him.