The Cyberpunk Novel of Joy
an excerpt

Something cold and metallic touched the back of his neck, right above his collar. It prickled, and he could feel the hairs around it raise. Two more heartbeats and his three prosthetic limbs were on fire. Electricity worked it's way through the places where they connected to his skin and the pain sensors worked overtime, creating sensation where there shouldn't be any because they didn't know what to do with the overflow of energy that was being charged to them. He got the overwhelming urge to cough and began to hack up the saliva from the back of his throat as his limbs convulsed. After he had stopped moving and the fire in his limbs had died, he calmed the cough and blinked rapidly several times, looking up at the person casting shadow over him.

With the light shining down from behind her he had to squint to make out her features. The first thing he saw, the first thing that he wagered anyone saw, was the long, thick, black braid that fell over her shoulder and reached the floor in her kneeling position, the very tip of it leaving hieroglyphs in the dirt. When his eyes adjusted he saw that she was very pale and very thin. He couldn't tell, but from her position he guessed her to be about five feet even in her flats. This was the woman who was going to have her fun with him? He bit back a gasp of amusement and stared up at her evenly.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said, and stood up so that all he could see staring straight out were the pleated cuffs in her black trousers, and the black flats she wore. There was a small bit of pale, yellow tinged skin peeking out between them. “Well, Mr. Samuals. It's good of you to grace us with your cognizance.”

Daijo said nothing. He closed his eyes and turned his head so that his cheek and nose were pressed against the cool tile of the floor. He curled into a ball out of habit, crossing his arms over his chest and bringing his knees up to his stomach to protect his internal organs. She gave a small burst of sharp laughter. “Old habits die hard, do they Mr. Samuals?”

“Human instinct isn't something you just erase with the addition of prosthetics.” His voice was strained from the charge that had just gone through his body.

“Isn't it?” She walked over to the table and picked up one of the sheets of paper and brought it back across the room to him. She stood five paces from him and dropped it on the floor. Then she clasped her hands behind her back and gazed down at him with the demeanor of an eager hostess like Daijo was sure he'd find up in the restaurant of the resort. He looked at the paper, and she waited.

After a space of fifteen minutes he pushed himself up with his original arm, the prosthetic one still hung loosely at his side because of the damage it had acquired earlier, and scooted across the distance until he could reach out and take it. It crumpled as he picked it up and he looked down at it, taking a minute for it to register. His own face stared back up at him, fuller and with shorter hair. They had pulled it off the military intelligence net, he was sure, from his time in service. Under the picture, printed in large, black, block letters, was: Wanted for Theft of State Secrets. Alive. $5,000,000. Under that was his real name and his description.

“That's quite a price. You don't look like you're worth that much to me.”

“Did you allow for inflation?” He had hardly blinked before the flat connected with his jaw and he knew for certain that what he had thought was soft ballet slipper material was reinforced with something besides her small toes. His head jerked back on his neck and he fell sideways, unable to catch himself on his bad prosthetic arm. He hit the tile hard and let out a short grunt.

“Now, now,” said the deep voice. “I told you, nothing visible. That's going to bruise.”

Daijo looked up and waited for his eyes to focus before looking past her at the man sitting behind the table. He had forgotten there was anyone else in the room. The man had his fingers steepled in front of his face, elbows resting on the table. He too was wearing a nice black suit. His skin was the color of redwood tree bark, and almost as rough looking. His hair was also long and black, pulled to the back of his neck in a ponytail, though from there, Daijo had no way of knowing how long it was. He reminded Daijo of the Native American Superiority ads from before the war.

“Yes young lady,” he spat a small amount of blood from where he had bit down on his tongue out on the floor. “Don't want to damage the goods.” He looked up at the man, affecting a fatherly tone. “Young ones these days.”

The woman stared down at him coldly and crossed her arms over her chest. The man chuckled. “I keep her on a short leash boy, but you get her mad enough and she'll snap it.” A second kick caught him in the gut and he doubled over.

“What information do you have? We won't turn you in if you tell us.”

“I don't have any information. It's a lie.”

“The state isn't in the habit of lying, not about their criminals and their secrets. If you didn't have anything they wouldn't risk releasing the knowledge that there was something important enough to be stolen in the first place. Because of you they've had to fight off a hundred hackers a week trying to find out what you got away with.”

“And I bet all of them found exactly what I got away with, which was nothing.”

She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the recharger. She flipped the switch up and there was a soft crackling noise as the electricity warmed the metal surface. She held it up in front of her face and studied it curiously. “You know, I've never used one of these before. That was the first time. I rather liked it, watching you pulse with the energy. It must feel exhilarating.”

“Like napalm,” he said.

She smiled at that, the corners of her lips slipping up slowly, looking for all her life like a hungry cat. The unnatural green of her eyes glowed in the light from the room. “Does it? You know, I can't feel anything, I wasn't programmed to be able to. You'll have to tell me exactly how it feels, so I can live vicariously through you.”

She looked back at the man and he nodded his head and tapped his lips with the tips of his fingers as she knelt down over Daijo. She got so close to him that he could feel her breath as it ghosted over his chin, and peered into his eyes. She brought the recharger close to his temple and he let his body go limp and fell forward so that she would back off. As she lost her balance he brought his good arm around at her head. It stopped just short. She had caught his wrist and was holding it in her grip. He could feel the metal of her prosthesis under the skin and her fingers bit into the bones in his wrist so (strongly) that he thought it was going to shatter. He clenched his jaw against the pain and continued to push against her force.

She leaned so close that their noses almost touched. An series of electric pulses tore through his abdomen as she shoved the recharger right into his belly button. The muscles in his stomach tightened and he clenched forward, unable to control it.