Cyberpunk Blues – Part 9

Yesterday I mentioned the issue I had found with editing, right?

This morning, upon waking up after something like 15 hours of sleep (double sedatives for the lose), my wife informed me that we will have a babysitter this week, which will be used to try and catch up on Temple, which is a little overdue.  Again, I never want to rush my releases to meet some arbitrary self-imposed deadline, but I do want to try and stick to a release schedule.  It’s part of why I’m pushing so hard to get these posts on a set schedule.  So to have my wife step in, without spoiling the surprise, and find time for us to sit down and focus on the thing bothering me is a wonderful gift.

It’s those kinds of things that make me realize how lucky I got.

So, I wanted to do something new for today, as I’m feeling that I’ve hit a kind of wall with Cyberpunk.  However, after two days and a ton of effort, I just don’t have a new idea right now that’s actually original and interesting.  It’s hard to get the two to work together.  Also, my good friend Dr. Matt Scrivner has indicated that he is loving it, and by thunder I do requests for that man.  So, on we go.

I don’t like the current scene I’m in, but I’m gonna go ahead and push through with Betty’s house.  I LOVE THAT ASPECT.  Having it broken down into a fun little apartment sitcom moment in the middle of a cyberpunk action piece is just the sort of thing that makes me giggle.  Plus, I just wanted to imagine Chase in a bad-ass Mad Max coat.  Let’s face it, she totally rocked that thing.

Not much more to add to today’s intro, and I owe you wonderful people a lot of story.  Let’s get to it.

Without further bobbysocking…

Cyberpunk Blues – Part 9

Betty opened the door that should’ve led to a small six by ten room in any normal flat.  This one, however, opened to the top of a football stadium sized one room office.  At every desk, in front of every enormous set of screens and monitors, sat a picture perfect copy of Betty.  All several thousand of the Betty clones looked up as I walked in and shouted “Hi Chase!” in eerie unison.  I have to admit, I felt like a freakin rock-star when Betty did that.  I couldn’t fight the grin off my face if I even wanted to try.

Betty Prime took me towards the Central Operations station, a large central column surrounded by monitors feeding in data received from every part of my body.  I find it endlessly fascinating to watch the readout on everything from the status of my liver, to the readouts displaying the tensile strength available in my forefinger.  All the stuff humans took for granted was mapped, documented, categorized and uploaded with clockwork precision.  Betty couldn’t experience boredom either.  I’d tried to explain it to her, once, and the incredulous, scandalized look on her face made me laugh so hard that she never wanted me to bring it up again.

“It looks like that bullet didn’t manage to penetrate your chest overlay, Chase.  But it was a close thing.”  I snapped back to reality, landing roughly as I tried to change gears.  “How did it pin me to the bar wall then?  I could’ve sworn I was hit by a rogue passenger car.”

Betty scrunched up her nose, wiggling it as she tried to deduce meaning from the scrum of data.  “Best as I can call it, the bullet appears to have gained exponentially in force as it crossed the room towards you.  If that’s true, it could’ve been extremely dangerous.  Had it missed you and continued to the Wheel wall, it would’ve blown a hole in it the size of Texas.  Someone wanted you bad enough to risk destroying two habitable sections of the Wheel.”

I blanched, something I’d never done before happening twice in one day.  I was going to kill my father for getting me mixed up in this mess.  “What on Earth have we gotten ourselves into Betty?”  A pause, then I gave up solving the mystery right away.  On to other oddities, then. “Did you figure out what’s behind the souped up leather on my wrists?”

Betty nodded “That was easier to figure out once I got a handle on how the bullet functioned.  The leather absorbs the kinetic energy of your muscles and channels it towards the tensile strength of the leather.  No amount of brute force is getting us out of those Chase.”

So far, the only brushes I’ve had with magic all had one thing in common: energy manipulation.  Was that how the Genesis Ships had worked?  The ability to manipulate energy to such a degree could have staggering consequences in battle.  Like my Texas-sized bullet problem.  Still didn’t see where I fit into all this, but that was a problem for another day.

“Any ideas how we get out of this one Betty?”

She looked at me, and I winced.  I’d seen that look before, and I had never liked what came afterwards.

To be continued….

Wincefully,
Justin