Cyberpunk Blues – Part 1
Art through adversity.
I call bullshit.
Seriously. Maybe, maaaaayyyyybeeee, 1% of art made during adverse times becomes something amazing. It’s more like .01%. What happens to the rest you ask? It withers and dies on the vine. Seriously, no joke. Having your feet kicked out from under you doesn’t suddenly make you a better accountant or something. Writing is a job. It’s work, and there are certain ways you approach it to make it something you do much like a job. And when bad things happen, surprise surprise, it throws you off your work.
There isn’t some magical place where an author reaches a certain level of mental health and it activates Super Sayan mode. There’s no limit break here. There’s just an endless amount of recrimination and self-doubt which erodes any and all productivity, much as it does with almost every other profession. Those who think trying times such as these are going to produce astoundingly good art might be right. But 99.9% of the rest of it is going to be squeezed out between nightmarish anxiety and depression.
It’s just insane to expect anything else, and I keep seeing people who no concept of just how hard you have to work through everything happening in your life and still keep writing say over and over that they don’t understand the problem. I’ve lost my job, I’ve found out I won’t get help for a lifelong mental health issue which is eroding as I age until SEPTEMBER and I currently don’t have insurance past June 1st. I just got a notice from my retirement plan that there is a delay in my payment of my benefits, so I won’t be getting that until July-ish, if I’m lucky. I am having problems coping with my son, I don’t have money to really do anything, and it’s starting to drive me nuts that I haven’t gotten the house on the market even though I have to do most of the work (for good reasons, but still).
It’s just… how the hell am I supposed to make good writing happen out of that nightmarish swill? What the heck? That isn’t a recipe for Slaughterhouse V or Catcher in the Rye, that’s a recipe for self-destructive alcoholism. The fact that I’m sitting here even writing this is a shout-out to just how seriously I take this job. I just wish I wasn’t swimming through a lake of tar to get the job done.
Okay, story stuff now. Cyberpunk is what I want to do. I wasn’t feeling the Beyond Limits, and quite frankly this is my blog so I’ll change stories when I feel like it. Besides, cyberpunk is where my heart truly lies. So I’m going there. Boom. *mic drop*
Without further false bravado….
Cyberpunk Blues – Part 1
An arc of electricity shot from my charging station to my netjack, and I barely had time to register this impossibility before I was hit with the full wattage of it. My body locked, muscles screaming in agony and protest. My consciousness revolted, and mercifully staged a coup on being awake. I woke up on the floor, several hours later, my face partially covered in a pool of my own drool. What the hell was that?!
I gingerly got to my feet, sending an internal voice command to Betty asking if she was okay. Betty sent a whisper to my ear, more tentative than I was used to from her. I’m okay Chase, I think. Running diagnostics now. I grunted in the affirmative, and walked over to the station which provided the power grid my tiny apartment ran on.
The station, hardly deserving the name as it was roughly the size of a paperback book, was a charred husk. The blackened circuitry appeared like broken bones through the burnt holes in the device. I looked from the three months of dangerous jobs lying broken on the table to the wall-screen which dominated one of my apartment walls. It didn’t look damaged, but I couldn’t really tell until it had power again. Given my recent intake of work, it would be awhile.
How in the deep blue blazes had this happened? Betty chimed in with her usual whisper in my ear. It looks like all your implants and servos are working appropriately. I didn’t take any damage either. I’ve no idea what that was though, Chase. I’m scared. That rattled me. Betty lived within my hollowed out bones, replicating her nano-bot ‘body’ there and living within my blood and organs. Nothing had ever scared her. The worst that happened to her if a job went south would be a few months repairing my damaged innards.
Ours was a good arrangement. She got a body she didn’t have to grow or maintain, and I got a partner who could help fight implant rejection, aging, illness, cancer, STI’s, etc. It was creepy sharing a body some days, but I wasn’t going to argue with the results. Why are you scared Betty? I didn’t think anything scared you? Betty’s reply was slow, and even more hushed than normal. That isn’t supposed to be possible Chase. Not just hard, but impossible. The physics don’t allow for it. I won’t even be able to ask anyone until I fix your Netjack. How’s your pain there? Is the numbing working?
I hadn’t even felt her going to work on the damaged jack, and I absentmindedly rubbed the small port behind my left ear. I didn’t feel a thing. Working like a charm Betty, thanks. That meant I was out of contacts as well. Well, I was going to have to see him anyway, might as well get to it. There weren’t lights to turn off, so I simply walked out and locked the door. Unlike some careless pheeb, I had manual locks on my door. You can’t hack chains and deadbolts. I pulled my leather duster jacket closer, pulled down my nondescript fedora, and made my way towards my fat bastard of a father.
To be continued…
Bettyfully,
Justin
