Cyberpunk Blues – Part 6

Still love where I’m going with this, so I’m gonna run with it.

Been a tumultuous week.  I know I say that a lot, but it’s very true this week.  I posted about it Saturday, but I’m basically at the crossroads with my writing that I have to accept that I’m awful at writing and will most likely always be awful. There isn’t some magical word threshold where I write my millionth word and a fairy comes down and bops me on the noggin with a wand and I’m suddenly the next Walt Whitman.  It’s just not going to happen that way.

If I turn the corner and become good, if, it will be after years and years of writing without cessation while at the same time studying and attending writing conferences without end.  I want this to be my job, because quite frankly it’s the only way I’ll be able to put reasonable amounts of bread on my table.  I’m ill-adapted for the modern way of living, and my imagination is all I have to fall back on.

So going forward, I’m going to harp on myself for some consistency.  Last week I posted three times, at highly irregular dates.  They were also me throwing a bit of a pity party.  This is a space I use to write out my own struggles in the hope it helps someone else, but there’s a line between sharing and whining.  I have to take care not to cross it.

With Cyberpunk Blues, I’m currently out of touch with the story setting.  I make these up when I sit down to write the post, and I read through my previous entry to get a feel for what I was thinking a the time.  It’s not a great system, but this is also not a novel or a structured short story: It’s a writing exercise that I share with you.  I use it much as a body builder uses the gym.  I’d apologize, but it’s necessary and it’s also free.   Just imagine I’m singing “You’re Welcome” from Moana.

Without further bogarting of material…

Cyberpunk Blues – Part 6

I found myself walking out of the Wheel Police Headquarters with my mind buzzing.  Quite literally, as Betty was drilling into my netjack at that moment.  I was also still reeling from the amount of information my dad had pressed on me in such a few short hours.  I’d gone from being the slightly estranged daughter of a corrupt and despicable mob boss to the slightly resentful but grudgingly understanding daughter of a wizard given a job he hates to try and save everyone.  Today was basically a shite-show, and I was just along for the ride.

I had stopped at my usual post-dad bar, only this time I needed to get drunk for an entirely different reason.  Mike, his cybernetic eye watching me while he studiously washed a glass, grunted as I plopped down on the barstool and the bar simultaneously.  The only other occupant of the bar was face-down with an embarrassing collection of empty glasses in front of him.  Mike asked no questions, offered no opinion, he simply slid me the recently cleaned glass full to the brim with my favorite whiskey.  There was no room for ice at Mike’s bar.  I pulled my head up long enough to shoot the glass in one go, savoring the rich notes of the sweet heat as it slunk down my throat.

“Rough day?” Mike barked in a casually friendly basso.  “You’ve no idea.” I gasped out around the fire of the second glass I had just shot down.  Betty was whispering remonstrances at me for making her handle my liver and my netjack at the same time.  I ignored her as usual.  Betty might be my room-mate and good friend, but she didn’t understand anything about being human.  Sometimes, a good drink was my only defense against the muck I lived in.

A hand, human in appearance only, slammed down on my shoulder with the force of a bullet.  A normal person,even a bionically enhanced man like Mike, would’ve had their shoulder broken in several different places and been completely immobilized.  Me?  I just got mad.  This was my bar, and no ignorant thug would rob me of it’s simple charms.

There’s a reason no one remembered my jobs official title.  Bullets were worthless against people like me.  Our skin was multilayered graphene and carbon fiber weave.  It’d take a canon to even phase me, and those were strictly forbidden on the Wheel.  Something about living in the vacuum of space.  No, my job was to fight the men and women like me.  With my fists, which were the only equal to bodies crafted like mine.  So we rumbled.

Moving almost faster than a regular eye could see, I whipped my elbow around in a tight arc towards the midriff of the oh-so-recently incapacitated stranger.  I might not be able to tell were his head was, but with his right hand on my shoulder, I definitely knew where his flank was.  I connected with a sickly thud, like banging an enormous willow switch on heavy carpets.  My attacker staggered back.  I’d’ve put poor Mike through the back wall with that one, but the stranger was simply caught off guard by just how fast I was on the uptake.

To be continued…

Whiskeyfully,
Justin