Network: a cyberpunk romantic adventure
an excerpt

"You're a nobleman!"

"Eh? Oh, well I was a nobleman. Until my uncle killed me, of course."

"Killed. . . you?"

"Truly. Stabbed me just under the shoulder - there," he indicated the place by jabbing a finger just above his arm pit. "I didn't know until it was too late that a major artery runs through there, much to my misfortune."

"If you're dead. . . how are you here talking to me?"

He clasped his chin with one hand, rested the elbow on his other hand, and looked up in thought.

"Hm! That's a good question, anonymous woman. I really don't know."

"Don't know? . . . Why should I believe that you're dead, anyway? You look just as real as I, or that person just passing behind me!"

"Do I?"

Sebastien craned his neck to look at the person she'd referred to then looked down at his hands. He turned them over and over as if memorizing the lines in them. Finally he looked back up to her with an excited grin.

"Well what do you think about that! An opaque ghost!"

"Prove that you're dead."

"That's simple!" He held out his wrist. "Take my pulse. I promise you I don't have one."

"Take your. . . what?"

"Pulse! Like this," and he pinched his wrist with two fingers. He looked up, thinking again, and counted under his breath. He looked back down. "See? Easy as. . . wait a second! That look in your eyes. . . you're disconnected from the Network, aren't you?"

"What?" She looked around to make sure no one had heard. "That's absurd! What would make you say that?"

"Well first of all, the fact that you didn't immediately access the Network to find out how to take my pulse. You should have been able to do that in seconds! Secondly, the look in your eyes says it all."

She looked away.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"My darling Miss Kayla, believe me when I say I mean you no harm." She looked back at him suspiciously. "I am dead and, being dead, I know what it feels like to die. When you die, you're immediately disconnected from the Network (obviously because once your body and brain cease to function, so does your implant). Now for some reason I've come back as a ghost - an opaque ghost - and I can see in your eyes the way that I felt as I was dying: freedom."

"Freedom?" she whispered.

"Yes. I can see your mind turning outward instead of always inward to collect more and more information. I saw that you were choosing your own steps up here as you searched for - what wsa it you were looking for up here, exactly?"

Kayla blushed.

"I'm not exactly sure myself. When my shift ended today I was. . . drawn here."

"Yes. Well. Perhaps it is related to the way I was drawn back here once I died."