James Kelly - Rewired - The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

“Yes, Daddy!” Jamie nodded. “I only wish Momma and Becky could be here with us.”

“They’ll be here soon.”

When, he thought, they can get the simulations working properly.

Because this time, he thought, there would be no mistakes. The foundation he’d set up before he died had finally purchased the University’s interest in Jamie’s program — they funded some scholarships, that was all it finally took. There was no one in the Computer Department who had an interest anymore.

Jamie had been loaded from an old backup — there was no point in using the corrupt file that Jamie had become, the one that had turned itself into a tree , for heaven’s sake.

The old world was up and running, with a few improvements. The foundation had bought their own computer — an old one, so it wasn’t too expensive — that would run the environment full time. Some other children might be scanned, to give Jamie some playmates and peer socialization.

This time it would work, Daddy thought. Because this time, Daddy was a program too, and he was going to be here every minute, making sure that the environment was correct and that everything went exactly according to plan. That he and Jamie and everyone else had a normal family life, perfect and shining and safe.

And if the clone program ever worked out, they would come into the real world again. And if downloading into clones was never perfected, then they would stay here.

There was nothing wrong with the virtual environment. It was a good place.

Just like normal family life. Only forever.

And when this worked out, the foundation’s backers — fine people, even if they did have some strange religious ideas — would have their own environments up and running. With churches, angels, and perhaps even the presence of God…

“Look!” Daddy said, pointing. “It’s Mister Jeepers!”

Mister Jeepers flew off the rooftop and spun happy spirals in the air as he swooped toward Jamie. Jamie dropped Daddy’s hand and ran laughing to greet his friend.

“Jamie’s home!” Mister Jeepers cried. “Jamie’s home at last!”

Sterling to Kessel, 2.7 April 1987:

“Cyberpunk’s carcass, now flopping under the beaks and jaws of the vultures and hyenas, will soon settle gently into the total artistic decomposition of the invertebrates and fungi…

“Perhaps the movement’s common denominators were simply too easy to trash. Outside the tiny circle of originators, no one seems to have taken its ideals seriously enough to write a major novel in the cyberpunk vein; they seem more interested in dressing up of standards with a gloss of c-word tropes…

Sometimes I feel that if we could get our hands around the neck of whatever it was that made us this way, we’d really have it made. Sure, there’s the rage, and It, whatever It is, should indeed pay a terrible price for making us like this… If we were really able to get hold of Whatever-It-Is, we ought to be able to talk intelligibly, at least to our contemporaries, in our own voices, and be heard and understood, and even, possibly, appreciated. I don’t know what that kind of fiction would look like, but it would be the ‘native literature of a post-industrial society,’ and it would look right, and feel natural, and we’d be happy with it.”

Kessel to Sterling, 8 May 1987:

“I’ve come to feel that wasn’t such a bad fate, to acknowledge that all our ladders start there, in our mundane existence… You talk about just this with your understanding of the rage at the mundane world that lurks behind all our futures, be they brightly painted or grimly sketched…. ‘Shouldn’t somebody pay an awful price for making you that way?’ Exactly. But…pure rage, although it will take you to places that are worth going to and that few have the courage to visit, is not a good long-term engine. There have got to be other engines.”

It seems clear to us that Michael Swanwick is not only a PCP writer, but that he was publishing stories back in the ‘80s that might well have qualified him for the roster of original cyberpunks. In addition, he was also the most astute chronicler of the cyberpunk-humanist dustup. But Swanwick has always been one of science fiction’s most slippery writers; labels just will not stick to him. Or to the story that follows, a romp featuring two scam artists in a future that pushes cyberpunk to the edge of absurdity and yet maintains its skewed extrapolative rigor. At one time the phrase “comic cyberpunk” might have seemed an oxymoron. Not anymore.

THE DOG LOOKED like he had just stepped out of a children’s book. There must have been a hundred physical adaptations required to allow him to walk upright. The pelvis, of course, had been entirely reshaped. The feet alone would have needed dozens of changes. He had knees, and knees were tricky.

To say nothing of the neurological enhancements.

But what Darger found himself most fascinated by was the creature’s costume. His suit fit him perfectly, with a slit in the back for the tail, and — again — a hundred invisible adaptations that caused it to hang on his body in a way that looked perfectly natural.

“You must have an extraordinary tailor,” Darger said.

The dog shifted his cane from one paw to the other, so they could shake, and in the least affected manner imaginable replied, “That is a common observation, sir.”

“You’re from the States?” It was a safe assumption, given where they stood — on the docks — and that the schooner Yankee Dreamer had sailed up the Thames with the morning tide. Darger had seen its bubble sails over the rooftops, like so many rainbows. “Have you found lodgings yet?”

“Indeed I am, and no I have not. If you could recommend a tavern of the cleaner sort?”

“No need for that. I would be only too happy to put you up for a few days in my own rooms.” And, lowering his voice, Darger said, “I have a business proposition to put to you.”

“Then lead on, sir, and I shall follow you with a right good will.”

The dog’s name was Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux, but “Call me Sir Plus,” he said with a self-denigrating smile, and “Surplus” he was ever after.

Surplus was, as Darger had at first glance suspected and by conversation confirmed, a bit of a rogue — something more than mischievous and less than a cut-throat. A dog, in fine, after Darger’s own heart.

Over drinks in a public house, Darger displayed his box and explained his intentions for it. Surplus warily touched the intricately carved teak housing, and then drew away from it. “You outline an intriguing scheme, Master Darger — ”

“Please. Call me Aubrey.”

“Aubrey, then. Yet here we have a delicate point. How shall we divide up the…ah, spoils of this enterprise? I hesitate to mention this, but many a promising partnership has foundered on precisely such shoals.”

Darger unscrewed the salt cellar and poured its contents onto the table. With his dagger, he drew a fine line down the middle of the heap. “I divide — you choose. Or the other way around, if you please. From self-interest, you’ll not find a grain’s difference between the two.”

“Excellent!” cried Surplus and, dropping a pinch of salt in his beer, drank to the bargain.

It was raining when they left for Buckingham Labyrinth. Darger stared out the carriage window at the drear streets and worn buildings gliding by and sighed. “Poor, weary old London! History is a grinding-wheel that has been applied too many a time to thy face.”

“It is also,” Surplus reminded him, “to be the making of our fortunes. Raise your eyes to the Labyrinth, sir, with its soaring towers and bright surfaces rising above these shops and flats like a crystal mountain rearing up out of a ramshackle wooden sea, and be comforted.”