Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

find him when he didn’t come home for dinner.

“It’s dinnertime, Jamie,” she said. “Didn’t you hear the dinner bell?”

“I’m going to stay here for a while,” Jamie said.

“You’re going to get hungry if you don’t come home for dinner.”

“I don’t need food,” Jamie said.

His Mom smiled brightly. “You need food if you’re going to keep up with the Whirlikins,” she said.

Jamie looked at her. “I don’t care about that kid stuff anymore,” he said.

When his mother finally turned and left, Jamie noticed that she moved like an old person.

After a while, he got used to the hunger that was programmed into him. It was always there, he was always aware of it, but he got so he could ignore it after awhile.

But he couldn’t ignore the need to sleep. That was just built into the program, and eventually, try though he might, he needed to give in to it.

He found out he could order the people in the castle around, and he amused himself by making them stand in embarrassing positions, or stand on their heads and sing, or form human pyramids for hours and hours.

Sometimes he made them fight, but they weren’t very good at it.

He couldn’t make Mrs. Winkle at the schoolhouse do whatever he wanted, though, or any of the people who were supposed to teach him things. When it was time for a lesson, Princess Gigunda turned up. She wouldn’t follow his orders, she’d just pick him up and carry him to the little red schoolhouse and plunk him down in his seat.

“You’re not real!” he shouted, kicking in her arms. “You’re not real! And I’m not real, either!”

But they made him learn about the world that was real, about geography and geology and history, although none of it mattered here.

After the first couple times Jamie had been dragged to school, his father met him outside the schoolhouse at the end of the day.

“You need some straightening out,” he said. He looked grim. “You’re part of a family. You belong with us. You’re not going to stay in the castle anymore, you’re going to have a normal family life.”

“No!” Jamie shouted. “I like the castle!”

Dad grabbed him by the arm and began to drag him homeward. Jamie called him a pendejo and a fellator.

“I’ll punish you if I have to,” his father said.

“How are you going to do that?” Jamie demanded. “You gonna erase my file? Load a backup?”

A stunned expression crossed his father’s face. His body seemed to go through a kind of stutter, and the grip on Jamie’s arm grew nerveless. Then his face flushed with anger. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “Who told you this?”

Jamie wrenched himself free of Dad’s weakened grip.

“I figured it out by myself,” Jamie said. “It wasn’t hard. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“I — ” His father blinked, and then his face hardened. “You’re still coming home.”

Jamie backed away. “I want some changes!” he said. “I don’t want to be shut off all the time.”

Dad’s mouth compressed to a thin line. “It was Becky who told you this, wasn’t it?”

Jamie felt an inspiration. “It was Mister Jeepers! There’s a flaw in his programming! He answers whatever question I ask him!”

Jamie’s father looked uncertain. He held out his hand. “Let’s go home,” he said. “I need to think about this.”

Jamie hesitated. “Don’t erase me,” he said. “Don’t load a backup. Please. I don’t want to die twice.”

Dad’s look softened. “I won’t.”

“I want to grow up,” Jamie said. “I don’t want to be a little kid forever.”

Dad held out with his hand again. Jamie thought for a moment, then took the hand. They walked over the green grass toward the white frame house on the hill.

“Jamie’s home!” Mister Jeepers floated overhead, turning aerial cartwheels. “Jamie’s home at last!”

A spasm of anger passed through Jamie at the sight of the witless grin. He pointed at the ground in front of him.

“Crash right here!” he ordered. “Fast!”

Mister Jeepers came spiraling down, an expression of comic terror on his face, and smashed to the ground where Jamie pointed. Jamie pointed at the sight of the crumpled body and laughed.

“Jamie’s home at last!” Mister Jeepers said.

As soon as Jamie could, he got one of the programmers at the University to fix him up a flight program like the one Mister Jeepers had been using. He swooped and soared, zooming like a super hero through the sky, stunting between the towers of El Castillo and soaring over upturned, wondering faces in the Forum.

He couldn’t seem to go as fast as he really wanted. When he started increasing speed, all the scenery below paused in its motion for a second or two, then jumped forward with a jerk. The software couldn’t refresh the scenery fast enough to match his speed. It felt strange, because throughout his flight he could feel the wind on his face So this, he thought, was why his car couldn’t go fast.

So he decided to climb high. He turned his face to the blue sky and went straight up. The world receded, turned small. He could see the Castle, the hills of Whirlikin Country, the crowded Forum, the huge oval of the Circus Maximus. It was like a green plate, with a fuzzy, nebulous horizon where the sky started.

And, right in the center, was the little two-story frame house where he’d grown up.

It was laid out below him like scenery in a snow globe.

After a while he stopped climbing. It took him a while to realize it, because he still felt the wind blowing in his face, but the world below stopped getting smaller.

He tried going faster. The wind blasted onto him from above, but his position didn’t change.

He’d reached the limits of his world. He couldn’t get any higher.

Jamie flew out to the edges of the world, to the horizon. No matter how he urged his program to move, he couldn’t make his world fade away.

He was trapped inside the snow globe, and there was no way out.

It was quite awhile before Jamie saw Becca again. She picked her way through the labyrinth beneath El Castillo to his throne room, and Jamie slowly materialized atop his throne of skulls. She didn’t appear surprised.

“I see you’ve got a little Dark Lord thing going here,” she said.

“It passes the time,” Jamie said.

“And all those pits and stakes and tripwires?”

“Death traps.”

“Took me forever to get in here, Digit. I kept getting de-rezzed.”

Jamie smiled. “That’s the idea.”

“Whirlikins as weapons,” she nodded. “That was a good one. Bored a hole right through me, the first time.”

“Since I’m stuck living here,” Jamie said, “I figure I might as well be in charge of the environment. Some of the student programmers at the University helped me with some cool effects.”

Screams echoed through the throne room. Fires leaped out of pits behind him. The flames illuminated the form of Marcus Tullius Cicero, who hung crucified above a sea of flame.

“O tempora, O mores!” moaned Cicero.

Becca nodded. “Nice,” she said. “Not my scene exactly, but nice.”

“Since I can’t leave,” Jamie said, “I want a say in who gets to visit. So either you wait till I’m ready to talk to you, or you take your chances on the death traps.”

“Well. Looks like you’re sitting pretty, then.”