"Paul Di Filippo - Ribofunk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

horsesweat, except for a new item called Needlestrength-Nine. I ordered a
dose, and it came in a cup of cold frothy milk sprinkled with cinnamon. I
downed it all in two gulps, the whole nasty mess of transporter proteins and
neurotropins, a stew of long-chain molecules that were some konky biobrujo's
idea of blister-packed heaven.
All it did was make me feel like I had a cavity behind my eyes filled
with shuttle-fuel. My personal sitspecs still looked as lousy as a rat's
shaved ass.
That's the trouble with the tropes and strobers you can buy in the
metamilk bars: they're all kid's stuff, G-rated holobytes. If you want a real
slick kick, some black meds, then you got to belong to a set, preferably one
with a smash watson boasting a clean labkit. A Fermenta, or Wellcome, or Cetus
rig, say. Even an Ortho'll do.
But as I said, I had no set, nor any prospect of being invited into one.
Not that I'd leap at an invite to just any old one, you latch. Some of the
sets were too toxic for me.
So there I sat with a skull full of liquid oxygen, feeling just like the
Challenger before liftoff, more bummed than before I had zero-balanced my eft
on the useless drink. I was licking the cinammon off the rim of the glass when
who should slope in but my one buddy, Casio.
Casio was a little younger 'n me, about fifteen. He was skinny and white
and had more acne than a worker in a dioxin factory. He coulda had skin as
clear as anyone else's, but he was always forgetting to use his epicream. He
wore a few strands of grafted fiberoptics in his brown hair, an imipolex vest
that bubbled constantly like some kinda slime mold, a pair of parchment pants,
and a dozen jelly bracelets on his left forearm.
"Hey, Dez," said Casio, rapping knuckles with me, "how's it climbing?"
Casio didn't have no set neither, but it didn't seem to bother him like
it bothered me. He was always up, always smiling and happy. Maybe it had to do
with his music, which was his whole life. It seemed to give him something he
could always fall back on. I had never seen him really down. Sometimes it made
me wanna choke the shit outa him.
"Not so good, molar. Life looks emptier'n the belly of a Taiwanese baby
with the z-virus craps."
Casio pulled up a seat. "Ain't things working out with Chuckie?"
I groaned. Why I had ever fantasized aloud to Casio about Chuckie and me,
I couldn't now say. I musta really been in microgravity that day. "Just forget
about Charlotte and me, will you do me that large fave? There's nothing
between us, nothing, you latch?"
Casio looked puzzled. "Nothing? Whadda ya mean? The way you talked, I
thought she was your best sleeve."
"No, you got it all wrong, molar, we was both wasted, remember?..."
Casio's vest extruded a long wavy stalk that bulged into a ball at its
tip before being resorbed. "Gee, Dez, I wish I had known all this before. I
been talking you two up as a hot item all around TeeVeeCee."
My heart swelled up big as the bicep on a metasteroid freak and whooshed
up into my throat. "No, molar, say it ain't so...."
"Gee, Dez, I'm sorry...."
I was in deep gurry now all right. I could see it clear as M31 in the
hubblescope. Fish entrails up to the nose.